PGN Viewer

How to use

1. 1Paste a PGN string into the input, or pick a preset to load a famous game such as Spassky vs Fischer 1972 game 6, Anderssen's Immortal, or the Paris Opera mate.
2. 2If the PGN contains multiple games (a Lichess export, a tournament dump), a Games picker appears. Click any game tile to switch.
3. 3Use the step controls below the board to go to the start, step back or forward one half-move, or jump to the end. Each half-move in the move list is clickable, so you can warp to any position directly.
4. 4Read the side panel for the current side to move, the check or checkmate flag, and the game result. The most recent move's from and to squares are outlined on the board.
5. 5Click Copy FEN to grab the canonical FEN of the current position, then paste it into the Chess FEN Viewer or any chess engine to keep analysing.

About this tool

PGN Viewer parses any Portable Game Notation string and lets you replay the game in your browser. Drop in a single game or a whole export (Lichess study, chess.com archive, tournament dump) and the tool detects every game, lists them in a picker, and replays the main line of each. The PGN tag block is decoded into a labelled card so the Event, Site, Date, Round, White, Black, Result, ECO, and any custom tags are easy to read. The movetext tokenizer follows the PGN specification: move numbers, glyphs ($1, $4), inline comments inside braces, and the terminating result token (1-0, 0-1, 1/2-1/2, or *) are all recognised, while recursive annotation variations inside parentheses are skipped so only the main line is replayed. SAN moves are matched against a full legal-move generator, with pin checks, castling, en passant, and pawn promotion all handled, so files that use compact PGN forms (such as Rd1 when only one rook can reach d1, or exd6 for an en passant capture) replay cleanly. The board renders with Unicode chess glyphs, so it works on any device without an external font or image. Step controls jump to the start, step back or forward one ply, or jump to the end of the game; each half-move in the move list is a button that warps directly to that position. The last move's from and to squares are outlined so you can see what just happened, and check, checkmate, and stalemate flags appear automatically on the side panel. A copy-ready FEN string is generated for the current position, ready to paste into the Chess FEN Viewer, an analysis board, or any chess engine to continue exploring. PGN-with-FEN (the SetUp and FEN tags used by tactics trainers and chess puzzles) is supported, so games that start from a non-standard position replay correctly. Useful for chess players reviewing their own games, streamers and writers who paste PGN into articles and want a clean replay, coaches walking through a student's game ply by ply, and developers prototyping chess tools who need a reliable PGN-to-board renderer. Everything runs in your browser; the PGN strings you paste and the positions you analyse never leave the tab.

Free to use. Works in your browser. No signup, no login.