PGN Viewer
Paste a PGN. Get a board you can actually use.
Drop in a PGN from any source and you get a clean, step-through board on its own page, with a shareable URL. No installs, no Java applet from 2008, no account required to view.
What is a PGN, in one paragraph
PGN stands for Portable Game Notation. It is the plain text format chess uses to record a game. A few header lines at the top with the event, the players, and the result, then the moves themselves in standard algebraic notation. Lichess, Chess.com, your offline GUI, and almost every chess engine in existence read and write it. If a tool says it can export a game, it almost certainly exports PGN.
What this viewer does
- A real page per game. Every PGN you paste gets a permanent URL you can share, bookmark, or link from a blog post. The position is rendered server side so it previews properly when you paste the link in chat or social.
- Move-by-move playback. Step forward and back with the arrow keys. The board state stays in sync with the move list.
- Comments and ratings. Other people can talk about the game on the page, leave a star rating, and guess the players' Elo. You can turn that into a fun thing or just ignore it and use the viewer.
- Engine analysis on request. Hit the analyze button and Stockfish runs over the game and labels the brilliancies and blunders. It is not on by default because we do not want to spoil first impressions.
Where you can get a PGN
- Lichess. Open any game, click the share menu, copy the PGN. Or just paste the game URL into our upload box and we fetch it for you.
- Chess.com. Open the game, click Share, switch to the PGN tab, copy.
- A desktop GUI. SCID, Arena, ChessBase, and Hiarcs all export PGN from the file menu.
- An engine match. Cute Chess and almost every tournament tool write PGN by default.
FAQ
Do I need an account?
No. You can view any game without signing in. Uploading a PGN is also possible without an account, though signing in keeps your games organized on your profile.
Does it support variations and comments inside the PGN?
We render the mainline cleanly. Variations and inline annotations inside the PGN are preserved on the page but may be displayed in a simplified way. The original PGN is always available to copy back out.
Can I embed the board on my own site?
Not yet. For now the shareable URL is the supported way to point people at a game.
Is there a size limit?
Standard games and most correspondence games are fine. Huge databases with thousands of games in one file are not the use case here. Upload one game at a time.
Ready to view a game?
Paste your PGN or a Lichess link. You get the board on a real page in a couple of seconds.