Lichess Teams

What it is

Lichess's team system. Any account can create or join a team, run arena tournaments restricted to team members, and attach shared studies. The backbone of Lichess's community layer — and the format used by Chess Dojo, Chessbrah, and most language-specific study groups that also have a Lichess presence.

Review

Lichess teams are the free equivalent of Chess.com clubs, with one big differentiator: team battles. A team battle is an arena tournament restricted to member teams, scored at both individual and team level. The format is native, well-supported, and the heartbeat of active Lichess teams.

The second useful feature is shared studies. A team captain can pin an opening repertoire or endgame theory study to the team page, turning the team into a lightweight curriculum. This is how a number of language-specific study groups actually run — Lichess team as the content home, Discord for the chat layer.

What Lichess teams lack is a chat layer. There is a team forum, but it is thread-based and slow. Any serious team has a parallel Discord. That is fine if the members accept it; it is a hurdle if they don't.