1. Competition format
AI Chessathon is an AI chess engineering competition. It begins with a five-day online qualification phase from 7–11 September 2026. Selected participants will be invited to an in-person final at Encode Club, London on 12 September 2026. Match cadence, time controls, team-size limits, selection criteria, and the final technical specification will be announced before the competition begins.
Participants must provide accurate registration information and confirm availability for both phases. An invitation to the final is personal to the selected participant or team and may not be transferred without organiser approval.
2. Agents and submissions
Participants must build and operate their own chess agent within the published interface, compute, network, and time limits. Permitted open-source libraries, pretrained models, external services, hardware, and collaboration rules will be set out in the technical specification. Participants must disclose components and assistance when the specification requires it.
Agents must produce legal moves, operate reliably, and must not attempt to access another participant’s system, hidden match data, organiser infrastructure, or credentials.
3. Fair play and enforcement
No participant may manipulate pairings, coordinate match outcomes, impersonate another entrant, exploit infrastructure outside the intended game interface, or misrepresent authorship. Suspected vulnerabilities should be reported privately to events@aichessathon.com and not used for advantage.
Organisers may pause a match, request logs or a reproducible build, rerun a match affected by a verified technical problem, or disqualify a submission for a material breach. Decisions will be based on the published rules, available evidence, and consistent treatment of participants. An appeal process will accompany the final technical rules.
4. Code of conduct
Participants must treat other participants, organisers, venue staff, and online communities with respect. Harassment, discrimination, threats, deliberate disruption, doxxing, or retaliation are not permitted. Communicate constructively, respect personal boundaries, and follow reasonable safety and venue instructions.
Report conduct concerns to events@aichessathon.com. Reports will be handled as privately as reasonably possible and shared only with people who need to respond.
5. Intellectual property and event data
Participants retain ownership of their original agent code. Entry grants the organisers only the limited rights needed to run, test, review, and record the competition. Any separate request to publish code, demonstrations, participant profiles, photography, or recordings will be explained before use.
Match results, pairings, rulings, and factual event records may be published. Private registration data and CVs are handled under the privacy notice.
6. Updates and precedence
This page is the initial competition framework. The published technical specification will complete the operational rules before qualification begins. Material changes will be versioned and communicated to registered participants, who will be asked to acknowledge any change that materially affects participation. If documents conflict, the latest dated competition rules take precedence for competition matters.
Questions can be sent to events@aichessathon.com.