Open Source C++ Chess Games

Scid is a chess database application (cross-platform, for Unix/Linux and Windows) with many search and database maintenance features.

Stockfish is a free, powerful UCI chess engine derived from Glaurung 2.1. Stockfish is not a complete chess program and requires a UCI-compatible graphical user interface (GUI) (e.g. XBoard with PolyGlot, Scid, Cute Chess, eboard, Arena, Sigma Chess, Shredder, Chess Partner or Fritz) in order to be used comfortably. Read the documentation for your GUI of choice for information about how to use Stockfish with it. Stockfish is a 11-time winner of the Top Chess Engine Championship. Stockfish is open source (GPLv3 license). That means you can read the code, modify it, and contribute back. You can use Stockfish on your computer or on your iOS or Android device. So you can get world-class chess analysis, wherever you are. The Stockfish engine features two evaluation functions for chess, the classical evaluation based on handcrafted terms, and the NNUE evaluation based on efficiently updatable neural networks.

A free and open source chess database application for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Brutal Chess features full 3D graphics, an advanced particle engine, and several different levels of intelligent AI, inspired by the once popular "Battle Chess" released by Interplay circa 1988.

Eagle Mode is a zoomable user interface (ZUI) with file manager, file viewers, games, and more. This project is about a futuristic style of human-computer interaction, where the user can visit almost everything simply by zooming in. It features a portable C++ toolkit API for developing such ZUIs, and it features the Eagle Mode application, which provides a virtual cosmos with plugin applications. The most important one is the professional file manager with its rich, scriptable command set. It integrates file viewers for most of the common file types, as well as an audio and video player. Furthermore, the virtual cosmos contains a chess game, a netwalk game, a 3D minesweeper game, a multi-function clock, a stock watchlist, some fractals, and a Linux kernel configurator in form of a kernel patch.

Scidb is an open-source chess database application for Windows, Unix/Linux. It is a new development inspired by Scid.

XiangQi Wizard (Chinese Chess Wizard) is a powerful XiangQi (chinese chess) program, which supports UCCI engines. XQWizard Light is the Mobile version for Windows CE and Java ME. ElephantEye is the UCCI engine in XQWizard with strong AI.

Chess engine code name "Gull"

EBoard is a user-friendly chess interface for ICS (Internet Chess Servers). While it will focus on FICS (www.freechess.org), should work with any other ICS. It supports playing against local chess engines too.

Chess Wizard is a powerful chess software to play, study, edit and publish games. It supports many strong UCI engines, provides a huge online database and hundreds of puzzles. Chess960 is available now.

OliveChess is a simple chess engine compatible with modern chess interfaces such as ChessBase products, Arena and XBoard/Winboard. The engine supports UCI and XBoard protocols. Note: in order to use it as an xboard engine you may need Polyglot tool to be installed first

ChessDB is a free open-source chess database for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and most UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems. ChessDB is based on code from Scid http://scid.sourceforge.net/ - a project for which there have been no updates for several years. In

A 3D and portable chess game with an embedded Artificial Intelligence and some pretty good graphics.

A console/text based chess program with XBoard/CECP and UCI API, available on all major platforms. You may need a graphical chess interface to use it. Please refer to README.md in the files section for installation instructions. The last stable release is 2.2.0 and has been released on 13/04/2026. Belofte 0.2.0 till 0.9.20 (c/c++): Xboard 1 & 2 (CECP) - Linux/Unix/(Windows) Belofte 2.1.1 and up (c++11) : UCI and Xboard 2 - Linux/Windows/Mac/Android/... For access to code, please clone the git repository. Compiles and Runs on 32/64 bit on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android (ARM/x86) and Raspberry. Released under GNU v2 license. (means free to copy, free to modify, free to use, ...) Works fine with Arena/Cutechess/BanksiaGui/Winboard/Xboard/...

The Nimzo_3d GUI is a chess program for Windows 7 - 11 It is an enhanced version of the Tarrasch Chess GUI written by Mr Bill Forster, with many additional features. It has a simple, easy to use interface, so it is ideal for novice players or inexperienced computer users. It also has more advanced features for expert users. So if you just want a casual blitz game against the computer, or to automatically analyse one of the famous games from chess history, it can perform these tasks and many more. It has a choice of a classical 2d screen view or realistic 3d graphics powered by DirectX Anyone who wants to add new features to the program should download the file < Nimzo_3d_v4_build.7z> from the < Files > < Build> section. This package contains Visual Studio project files and C++ source code files. Alternative Nimzo 3d Chess GUI website with other downloads, including 32-bit versions - https://nimzo-3d-chess-gui.infinityfreeapp.com

Redqueen is an UCI (Universal Chess Interface) only compatible chess engine written in C++.

Thief is a free chess client to play on chess servers like FICS: http://www.freechess.org It supports regular chess and all variants played. It is the best client for playing Bughouse, a special team-chess game (for more info see http://www.bughouse.

Chess for Windows. Created in Visual Studio /VC++. Has a basic colorful interface, features AI/CPU player. Future versions will have drag'n'drop, take back option, more visual AI move, different difficulty levels...

Gambit is a cross-platform chess game. There are binaries for Windows users. Users of Unix-like operating systems can check the web site for build instructions (it should be easy to follow).

Chess++ is a modern multi platform 3d chess game implementation for (at least) GNU/Linux and Windows with user programmable chess rule sets, a client software application (chesspp), and a server application (cheppd) by which all the games are managed.

SCID Recast is a deterministic, modern architecture modernizing the core database and indexing subsystem from first principles. It preserves compatibility with existing si5 databases while restructuring the core into a clean, modular C library (libscidcore) with well‑defined boundaries for database, game model, search, engine integration, and metadata. The project emphasizes reproducibility, explicit invariants, a clear error model, and a stable foundation for supporting archival workflows and future tooling.

Download and extract, then run Spert file. For Windows 32-bit systems, run Spert x86 file.

Cassandre is an extensible chess engine written in C++, it is Winboard/XBoard compliant.

Grapefruit is an opensource chess engine based on Toga II 1.4 beta5c.

Project Invincible is a free, portable, open source and cross-platform chess game. Challenge a friend to a 3D chess battle or test your skills against a computer opponent. If the AI is too strong for you, just make it weaker with settings. After all, it's not a shame to lose to full strength of Project Invincible. :)