The European Championship 2026 took place in Ankara, Türkiye, from July 26th to August 2nd.

The new European Champion is Andrii Kravets 3p from Ukraine, undefeated!

The runner-up is Ali Jabarin 3p, followed by Lukas Podpera 7d from Czechia for the third place and Denis Dobranis 6d from Romania, 4th.

The Championship started with 32 players in a double knock-out phase, meaning that losers would have a second chance to join the final bracket if they could win all following matches. That was also to the biggest joy of all the fans of the players who got defeated in the first round.

Youth talents in action! But not only…

This year, the field was paved with youth talents. Just before the EGC, Bartik Dach 5d and Jan Komin 5d from Czechia had very impressive results in the Grand Prix Circuit – Moyo Open (Pardubice, Czechia), playing head to head with the top players like Li Yuanzhen 7d or Mateusz Surma 4p. Larion Syrotkin 4d from Ukraine and Bende Barcza 5d from Hungary were among the very promising participants as well. 
All of them managed very good games, starting with Larion against Mateusz in the first round: it was very close to be the biggest upset of the year! Unfortunately for Larion, experience ruled in favor of Mateusz.

Stjepan Medak 6d (Croatia), Vsevolod Ovsiienko 6d (Ukraine) and Davide Bernardis 6d (Italy and U21 runner-up this year), other well known youth talents, got through round 4 and 5.

Just for the story, it was not all about youth. Zbynek Dach 4d, who is definitely not considered a youth player anymore, paired with Andrii Kravets 3p in the first round, gave it all against the to-be champion and sadly lost on a last ko by 0.5. Again just for the story, last year, Andrii had also started the European Championship with a 0.5 victory, against Robert-Andrei Grosu 4d from Romania who had played extremely well. Is that a tradition?

The favorites and a comeback 

At the end of the 3 first rounds, only Mateusz Surma 4p, Andrii Kravets 3p, Ali Jabarin 3p and Lukas Podpera 7d, all with status of favorites, were undefeated and directly qualified in quarterfinals, while other players had to play extra rounds.

Having lost to Lukas Podpera in the second round, Denis Dobranis 6d, one of Romania’s star players, made it back from the losers bracket with two extra rounds and defeated the 2025 European Champion in quarterfinal. That was a big surprise, especially since Mateusz had a very impressive win-rate and level in this season. In the following game, Denis lost by a few points against Ali Jabarin, missing the final.

On the other side of the bracket, the match between Andrii Kravets 3p and Lukas Podpera 7d was spectacular, very close with a slight lead for Andrii until a certain point when Lukas took the advantage for a couple of moves, before losing it.

Later, in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship finals, Lukas took his revenge against Andrii (that will be for another article). But, well, that was too late for the title 😉

Overall, the Championship was very intense – games were very long, and often very complicated. It was broadcast and followed online by hundreds of spectators and reviewed live on Twitch by strong players, such as Diana Koszegi 2p, Lee Wooju 1p, Li Ang 3p, Motoki Noguchi 7d and then eliminated or resting players like Benjamin DG 1p or Lukas Kraemer 6d. The replays of the commentaries are available on the EGF’s youtube channel.

We are grateful to the main referee, Mehmet Emin Barsbey from Türkiye, and staff volunteers who took grate care of the players, and Jörg Sonnenberger from Germany, who did his best to provide live broadcast, video streams and Twitch-stream preparations despite difficult logistic conditions.

You can see the full results and find available games on the dedicated page: https://www.eurogofed.org/EC2026/pairings.html 

Thanks to Harry van der Krogt for the photos!