Belgian Go Federation

Résults of the 2026 blitz Belgian championship

1 Olivier Drouot — 6 pts (SODOS : 17) — winner of the Blitz Championship 2026 !
2 Yuanze Gao — 6 pts (SODOS : 16)
3 Yannick Kuy — 5 pts
4 Philippe Tranchida — 4 pts
5 Guillaume De Keijser — 3 pts — Belgian blitz Champion 2026 !
6 Michael Silcher — 2 pt
7 Auguste Elengesa Lekele N’Sele — 1 pt (SODOS : 5)
8 Jean-Denis Hennebert — 1 pt (SODOS : 1)

Congratulations to all the participants !

Not quite totally unexpectfully, the Chinese player, Yu Fu (8-d), is the 2026 world amateur champion in the WAGC. He ended unbeaten (8/8).

Silver medail goes to Japanese Hyo Ka (7-d) with 7/8.

And bronze medail goes to ...an European player ! Lukas Podpera (CZ, 7-d), as best player with 6 wins. Congratulations to him !

Note the surprinsingly desappointing result of the Korean player, Hyeon Seok Kim, who ends 8th with a 5-3 score.

Our guy this year was Bram Vandenbon (2-d). He did great with (also) 5 wins and 3 defeats (*) and an admirable 18th place out of a field of 52 participants.
(wins against: india (1-k), australia (3-d !), mexico (3-k), austria (3-d !), sweden (2-d); defeats to: canada (7-d), argentina (4-d), UK (4-d)

Complete results: https://wagc.go.art.pl/en/2026

Andreii Kravets (UKR, 3-p) wins his 3rd European title (2023-2024-2026) in Ankara, where the European Congress was organised this year.

He won against Ali Jabarin (3-p) in final (poor Ali lost in final of the European Championship for the 5th time !).

Mateusz Surma (PL, 4-p), last year's winner, had lost surprisingly in 1/4 of final against Denis Dobranis (RO, 6-d).

A short report: https://www.eurogofed.org/andrii-kravets-3p-is-the-european-champion-202...

***

In the main tournament (open), some strong Korean and Chinese 7-d amateurs have dominated as usual (1st European player ended 7th with a 6/10 score).
Unbeaten winner is Korean Ahn Yonho, with the perfect score of 10 wins in 10 rounds.

https://www.egc2026.com/en/events.html#/main_open/standings

NB: still, Ahn dropped one game in the WE tournament (to Chinese Li Yuanzhen):
https://www.egc2026.com/en/events.html#/week-end/standings

***

There were no Belgian participant this year. :-(

We had a very successful 16th edition of the Ghent Go Tournament with an appropriate 16 participants.

First Place: Matej Zakanj (5d)
Second Place: Renaud Braye (1d)
Third Place: Dick Riedeman (2d)

Complete results: https://www.gofed.be/webfm_send/673

The 36th Leuven go tournament (30 + 31/05) was organised this year in a location, in the university buildings.

There were 28 players, ranging from 16k-4d.

Winner was Lucman Bounoider, who remained unbeaten.
Three players ended with 4 wins: Frank Segers (5k, Leuven, BE), Patrick Breitkopf (6k, Aachen, DE), Dao Duy Khanh (10k, Vietnam).
Congratulations to them for their excellent result.

The top three of the tournament was

Lucman Bounoider (4d, Hoshi, BE)
Yannick Kuy (2d, Hoshi, BE)
Yuanze Gao (3d, Hoshi, BE)

so it seems that Hoshi is the place to be in Belgium to train your go!

The full results can be found at https://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Tournament_Card.php?&key=T260530A

Here are some more pictures while we were playing games.

The Korean Prime Minister Cup (KPMC) is the Korean version of the WAGC (World Amateur Go Championship) organised by the Nihon Ki-In.

2026 world amateur champion is Chinese Fu Yu (8-d), who won all his games.
Best European is Jan Prokop (CZ, 6-d) who ended 5th.
Our Belgian representant, François Gonze (4-d), ended 39th (out of a field of 52 competitors) with a 2/7 score.

Complete results of the main Tournament: https://eurogofed.org/newsp/2020/2025%20KPMC/KPMC_2025_National_Standing...

This year, a parallel tournament for the young players (under 15 years old) was organised.
Winner is the Taïwanese Tsang Minf Ruel (7-d).
Our "guy" was our rising star Joachim Laloux (3-k), who ended 15th (out of 28 players) with a 3/6 score (...and a win against a 1-k)

Complete results of the Youth Division (< 15 years old): https://eurogofed.org/newsp/2020/2025%20KPMC//KPMC_2025_Youth_Standings....

And here is a report by Damir Medak (in which you see a nice picture of François and Joachim playing a game in the pair tournament :-)
https://eurogofed.org/index.html?id=518

Xinghong Chen (China, 5-d) won the 39th edition of the Brussels tournament with a perfect score (5 wins).

He ends ahead of Fu TianYu (6-d), of the last year's winner, Kaku Maekawa (6-d) and of Cornel Burzo (6-d), all with 4 wins.

5th and best player with 3 wins was the young (8 years old !) prodigy Larion Syrotkin (3-d, Ukraine) (who managed to beat Cornel Burzo !).

This 39th edition met a big success: there were 74 participants, among whom 10 4-d or stronger

Complete results here: https://www.gofed.be/webfm_send/663

Alexander Qi from USA is a prodigy: he learned to play at 8, he became pro at 14.
And he is now world champion U18, ahead of the best Korean and Chinese rising stars !
A milestone for the Western go community !

more info here:
https://usgo.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=454497&item_id=123478
https://usgo.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=454497&item_id=124686&