Last Updated on May 10, 2026
XBoard is a graphical user interface chessboard for chess engines under the X Window System.
It serves as a front-end for many different chess services, including:
- Chess engines that will run on your machine and play a game against you or help you analyze, such as GNU Chess, Crafty, or many others.
- Chess servers on the Internet, where you can connect to play chess with people from all over the world, watch other users play, or just hang out and chat.
- Correspondence chess played by electronic mail. The CMail program automates the tasks of parsing email from your opponent, playing his moves out on your board, and mailing your reply move after you’ve chosen it.
XBoard is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Fully support engines that play chess variants, such as Fairy-Max. This means the GUI is able to display a wide range of variants such as xiangqi (Chinese chess), shogi (Japanese chess), makruk (Thai chess), Crazyhouse, Capablanca Chess and many other Western variants on boards of various sizes.
- Supports Universal Chess Interface (UCI), an open communication protocol that enables chess engines to communicate with user interfaces.
- Supports internet chess services including ICC and FICS.
Website: www.gnu.org/software/xboard
Support: User Guide
Developer: GNU project; Most of the program’s development is by Tim Mann
License: GNU General Public License; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version
XBoard is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Chess Apps | |
|---|---|
| Lucas Chess | Highly polished chess app with superb training facilities |
| En Croissant | GUI chess toolkit |
| PyChess | Advanced chess client |
| Scid | Shane's Chess Information Database |
| Knights | Chess game for the KDE desktop environment |
| ChessX | Chess database and FICS client |
| ChessMD | Lightweight PGN database viewer and analysis tool |
| XBoard | Graphical user interface chessboard for chess engines |
| Cute Chess | Graphical user interface, command-line interface and library |
| Nibbler | Chess analysis GUI for UCI engines |
| GNOME Chess | Vala-based chess GUI |
| JFXChess | JavaFX Chess GUI |
| Obsidian Chess Studio | Chess analysis platform |
| CoreChess | Chess GUI for chess engines |
| SlugChess | Chess with Fog-of-War and shuffled officers |
| OChess | Chess game analysis software |
| eboard | Chess board interface for ICS and chess engines |
| Atom Chess | Chess engine built using Stockfish and Electron |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| FICS Clients | |
|---|---|
| ChessX | Chess database and FICS client |
| PyChess | Advanced chess client following the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines |
| XBoard | GUI chessboard for chess engines and to play against humans over the internet |
| eboard | GTK+ based chess board interface to ICS and chess engines |
| Jin | Java based graphical client for internet chess servers |
| Raptor | Chess interface for freechess.org (FICS) |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |