The most popular intellectual game in the world is not chess, but go. In total, there are about 50 million players in the world and the majority of the players are located in Asian countries. However, in 2016, Russia and especially St. Petersburg, significantly influenced the growth of the world community.

Communication campaign for the game popularization implemented in 2016 was coincided with the main continental competitions - the 60th jubilee European Go Championship, which was held in St. Petersburg.

Among the events included in this campaign, we want to notice the simultaneous game held in May 2016. This game was included in the Russian book of Records as the most massive in domestic history of this sport. Great interest was caused by a match of blondes against brunettes. This match took place on the fields of GEEK picnic festival. In general, Go was played everywhere and the media willingly wrote about it.

In 2017 the campaign “The city plays Go” was included in the short list of the PROBA AWARDS in the nomination “Best project using integrated communications”.

The European Championship itself became record-breaking for the number of participants and it was held in a fundamentally new format. It was a festival that combined many sports and cultural events. Such as an open lecture by representatives of the DeepMind (Google) laboratory, developers of AlphaGo – a neural network, who first beat a man in go.

The championship, won by the Russian player Ilya Sikshin, was highly appreciated by the European Go Federation and the entire global gaming community. As a result, our country was the first to win the World Amateur Championship. Another tournament will be held in 2020 in Vladivostok, and Russia will become the first non-Asian country in history to host these competitions.