The British Congress returned to Edinburgh after 15 years, this time hosted by the New Melville Bridge Club. With leafy Corstorphine and Edinburgh Zoo as a backdrop, the venue offered a quiet and spacious setting for a long weekend of Go. Fifty-seven players, matching last year’s turnout, gathered to make up one of the strongest player fields in recent memory.

On Saturday 7th June around 40 Go players descended on Elvet Hill House for the 2025 Durham Go Tournament. Ranks ranged from 7d down to a 30k player who played his second ever 19x19 game in Round 1, and there was also a good range of ages - including several youth players as well as a number of university students. Players came from across the UK, from London to Cardiff to Edinburgh.

On 28th and 29th June, Barmouth's Dragon Theatre was again the venue for the Welsh Open. 43 players - 13 up on 2024 - took advantage of the two-day tournament - a rarity on the BGA calendar. The higher numbers enabled the hiring of a separate room, where many reviewed their games and non-players could relax and mingle. A standout feature for 2025 was that no fewer than 10 players were from the Welsh clubs of Cardiff (9) and Aberystwyth (1) - surely a record?

I'm very pleased to announce that Damen (Ho-Yeung Woo) has been co-opted onto the Board of Directors of the BGA. He will have responsibility for player development, a task he has already been sharing with Sam Bithell.

This brings the Board appointments up to eight again, and continues a general trend where the average age of the Directors is decreasing, surely a good sign for the future of Go in the UK.

The British Pair Go Championship moved to Nottingham for the first time this year, with the tournament being sponsored by Threedy Printers Limited.

In another first we saw new first-time champions of Ai Guan and Damen Woo, with Alison and Simon Bexfield taking second place and Lauren Hindmarch and Bjorn Eurenius taking third spot.

The UK youth team has won the European Youth Team Competition 2025 having won all four preliminary rounds, their semi-final against Romania and this weekend the final against Germany.

We now have a number of people assigned to represent us in various international events. For your information here is a current update, not including the Pandanet tournament team members.

45th World Amateur Go Championship – May 16th – 21st, Vancouver.

Alistair Wall is our player here. Biographies of who he is up against can be seen at https://leago.gg/event/wagc2025/player-bios

40th World Youth Go Championship – August 21st to 29th, Selangor, Malaysia

A reminder that the 2025 BGA AGM will be next week on Thursday 22nd at 20:00, held by ZOOM video-conference.

The latest agenda and supporting documents can be found as usual on https://www.britgo.org/history/accounts , a link for the ZOOM session will appear on that page early next week.

The last round in the 2024-2025 season was against Switzerland. The games were all started at different times and by the advertised start time the UK was 2-1 with just Alison Bexfield's game to go. Unfortunately she lost and the match was tied, but since Belgium didn't lose the UK team was going to stay fifth anyway.

Italy won the B-League, despite losing the last match to second placed Netherlands. Croatia was third ahead of Belgium. Lithuania was demoted and Serbia will be in the play-off.

League Page with game records

This Early May Bank Holiday saw 43 players gather in the Leicester County Bridge Club (St Oswalds) for a long weekend of Go.