Create an Arena tournament

Create a public or private Arena tournament with a clock, length, start time and entry rules.

MCP tool lichess_write → create_arena_tournament

write Confirm

Creates the tournament and returns its ID, URL and start time. Lichess allows up to 12 public or 24 private tournaments a day per account and rejects rated 15-second and 0+1 variant tournaments. A public tournament is visible to everyone on Lichess. By default you confirm each call; you can switch that off for this tool.

Parameters

Parameters: create_arena_tournament
Name	Type	Description
name string	string	Tournament name, 2 to 30 characters. Empty gives a random Grandmaster name.
clock_time number required	number	Initial time in minutes, e.g. 3.
clock_increment integer required	integer	Increment in seconds, e.g. 0.
minutes integer required	integer	Length of the tournament in minutes, e.g. 60.
start_date string	string	ISO start time. Overrides wait_minutes.
wait_minutes integer	integer	Minutes to wait before it starts, counted from now.
visibility string	string	public or private. Default public.
rated boolean	boolean	Games are rated and change ratings. Default true.
variant string	string	Variant key, e.g. standard. Default standard.
berserkable boolean	boolean	Players can Berserk. Only allowed if clock_increment is at most twice clock_time.
password string	string	Password players must enter.
min_rating integer	integer	Minimum rating to join.
min_rated_games integer	integer	Minimum number of rated games to join.
description string	string	Text shown to players on the tournament page.

tools/call

JSON-RPC

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "lichess_write",
    "arguments": {
      "operation": "create_arena_tournament",
      "arguments": {
        "name": "Friday Blitz Night",
        "clock_time": 3,
        "clock_increment": 0,
        "minutes": 60,
        "start_date": "2026-10-23T19:00:00Z",
        "rated": true,
        "visibility": "public"
      }
    }
  }
}

Example response

JSON

{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "{ ... same JSON as structuredContent ... }"
    }
  ],
  "structuredContent": {
    "tournament_id": "Qx7pLm2a",
    "name": "Friday Blitz Night",
    "url": "https://lichess.org/tournament/Qx7pLm2a",
    "clock": "3+0",
    "minutes": 60,
    "rated": true,
    "starts_at": "2026-10-23T19:00:00Z",
    "created_today": 1
  },
  "isError": false
}

Parameters

tools/call

Example response

Sign in once. Your agent does the rest.

Analytics cookies