At the Palace of Culture in Ungheni, where the town’s chess club has its headquarters, the playing tables were set out on Thursday, 16 July, for the “Vara de Aur – 2026” festival. The competition, organised by Ungheni City Hall, brings together 145 players in six tournaments and runs until Sunday, 19 July, when the prize-giving is scheduled for 15.00. It is the largest chess event publicly hosted by Ungheni — and, by its make-up, above all one for children.
Who plays, and in which tournaments
Of the 145 participants, 85 — nearly 59% — compete in the four children’s tournaments: under 14 (16 players), under 12 (28), under 10 (27) and under 8 (14). The rest are split between tournament A, the open, with 47 players, and tournament B, without ELO, with 13. The festival’s chief arbiter is Vasile Sanduleac.
Only one tournament with an international rating
Of the six tournaments, only tournament A is validated with an international FIDE rating; the other five are played on the national rating. Tournament A is also where the only player with a classical title in the competition is found — the international master (IM) Sergiu Bargan, with a coefficient of 2203. No grandmaster is taking part. Other players hold “Arena” titles (AFM, AIM), awarded for games on FIDE’s online platform, which are not the equivalent of the classical master titles. The average ELO in tournament A is 1707 — a club level.
“One of the most important”? The data says otherwise
The Palace of Culture presented “Vara de Aur” as “one of the most important competitions.” The public data does not support the superlative. The festival does not appear in the Moldovan Chess Federation’s Calendar of sporting actions for 2026, which lists 23 competitions. Of the 145 players, 141 are from the Republic of Moldova; the 2024 edition was called “international” and invited eight countries, which the 2026 regulations no longer do. Adding up the prize table in the regulations, one arrives at around 25.800 lei at most — below the fund announced for the tournament in Comrat (30.100 lei); the regulations do not declare a total budget.
Who covers the prizes is not apparent from the public data: the State Register of Local Acts contains no act of Ungheni City Hall on the subject of the festival. Some of the acts, however, are scanned PDFs that the index does not read, so the absence from the register does not prove that funding does not exist. There is also no public information on which edition of the festival this is, and how many of the 145 players are from Ungheni cannot be established from the start lists.
Ungheni, a recurring chess host
This is not the first time the town has hosted chess on a large scale. Ungheni has a chess section at the Sports School and a dedicated pavilion — “Chess – a bridge between generations,” built by JCI Ungheni in “Micul Cluj” Park. And in 2021, former world champion Anatoly Karpov gave a simultaneous exhibition here. So “Vara de Aur” is the largest chess event publicly hosted by the town and, above all, one for children — important for Ungheni, even if not “one of the most important competitions” in the country.