The Minesweeper World Championships 2025

I’m writing about this almost a whole year after the event…the championships were held on the 27th and 28th of September last year.

It was the whole reason why I planned a trip to Portugal and Spain, ticking off Portugal from my bucket list, and postponing Japan which was previously the next place I had planned to visit.

Since I was practically retired from Minesweeper by then, just playing a few games every month, there was not much to hope for in terms of results. I was there to play and have fun.

The scene has changed a lot since years back when I was an active player. We used to simply have one event where we would play and have our final scores tabulated to see who scored the fastest times out of a certain number of games. This time, they still had that, which was the “official” Minesweeper World Championships (MSWCH), but they had side events like Chord Cup and Minesweeper Royale, both of which I had never heard of before.

The event was held at 42 Madrid. They had tight security; we registered with our passport and even went through a bag scan before being allowed to enter with an access card. 

someone drew this on a whiteboard outside the computer room

more decorations on the windows inside the room

setting up my mouse

I brought a mousepad, but theirs seemed fine...maybe because I am no longer an active player; it doesn't make much difference. :P 

ready to play!

(See all those additional icons on the screen after setting up? :P )

I took a few photos of the rankings after finishing some games, to see what the highest point was. (I knew my ranking would drop once everyone started completing all the necessary games…) My highest ranking was 17, right after finishing all the intermediates and one expert. 

my high scores of the day

Here are the final results after the session ended:

our organizer and old-timer Thomas Kolar was at 2nd place!

Everyone else before number 15th (Damien) were newer players that I didn't know.

I came in at number 39

there were a total of 47 players

For old times' sake, we actually took a photo with all the old-timers.

the only people I knew there; from left (after me): Damien, Tommy, Eduard, and Stevan

We had all met each other before, except for Stevan whom we were all meeting for the first time. He had been on the scene but never managed to make it to a physical meet.

When we arrived at the event, we were given different-coloured wristbands to indicate whether we allowed others to photograph us, whether we wanted them to ask for permission first, and a few other indicators that I don’t remember. Anyway, because of this, I won’t post general photos of the room, because I don’t know whether the face of someone who doesn’t want to be photographed might be clear enough in them. 

Since this post is getting long, I'll continue about the side events in a separate post.