Pandanet Youth Go European Team Championships

The third Pandanet Youth Go European Team Championships will be held from January to April 2026. The first edition was in 2024 and the second in 2025.

This European team event has strict eligibility requirements with all players having to be citizens of the country they represent (as opposed to qualifying through long term residence) and to be U18. The reason for these tighter criteria is that were the winning team be invited to compete in a world event then the players would need to be able to demonstrate citizenship of their country.

Each country has to nominate a squad of around 12 players. For each match 5 players are selected from the squad; at least one must be an Under-12, and one must be female. Until 2026 the girl played on Board 4 and the Under-12 on Board 5; from 2026 the team has to play in strength order, with the strongest player on Board 1. The matches are normally played on Pandanet on Wednesday evenings.

2026

There are twelve countries participating (up from nine). There are two leagues with six teams in League A and six teams in League B, the best placed team in League A being the PYGETC Champion.

The UK is again playing in League A, having survived the play-off for fifth against second place in League, B Poland.

Team Manager Alison Bexfield has selected the UK team for this season as follows:

Ryan Zhang
Daniel Yang
Lea Wong
Lukasz Kudla
Blake Shamoon
Andrew Volovich
Jin Cheng
April Chen
Chenbei Ding
Emily Gan
Sophia Gan
Fane Dhamari

UK position equal 5th.

21st January UK 0 - 5 Romania

1. Ryan Zhang (RYANZ2013, 3d) 0 - 1 Robert Andrei Grosu (Pingu25, 4d) by resignation
2. Daniel Yang (Electrons, 1k) 0 - 1 Alexandru Nicolas Patrascu (Nicolas1, 1d) by 27.5
3. Lea Wong (leazwong7, 2k) 0 - 1 Andrei-Luca Heemeryck (AndreiGoGo, 4k) by 15.5
4. Lukasz Kudla (wopiwopi, 6k) 0 - 1 Gruia Taranu (Gruia1, 9 k) by 4.5
5. Fane Dhamari (Falcon9, 20k) 0 - 1 Ana Sofia Gheorghe (AnaSofia, 12k) by 59.5

11th February UK - Ukraine

11th March Germany - UK

1st April UK - Croatia

22nd April UK - Czechia

More details: Pandanet Youth Go European Team Championships (PYGETC)