You may have drawn a grid on paper and played Gomoku. But ask who organizes its world championships, and the answer takes you beyond the board: the Renju International Federation is based in Stockholm, and its current president is from Estonia. Why does a game you can start anywhere need an organization that crosses borders?
1899: The rules go on record
In 1899, a Japanese newspaper first used the name Renju for the game. That year also brought organized play under written restrictions: the double-three became a forbidden move. A game that two people could govern by agreement now had a rule they could share in competition.
The restrictions did not arrive all at once. From 1903, the double-three restriction applied only to Black. In 1912, a double-three by Black became an automatic loss; in 1916, so did a line of more than five stones. Year by year, the rules grew tighter and their judgments more explicit.
The Soviet Union’s founding seat
The federation founded in 1988 had three founding members: Japan, the Soviet Union and Sweden. The founding record establishes the Soviet Union’s seat; it does not make that name interchangeable with any one country today. The distinction matters when you read the later membership list.
That same list records several Soviet republics joining in 1988. The Soviet Union’s founding seat, in other words, does not stand for every name on the list that was then within its borders. The borders changed; the recorded years of admission still point to the world as it was.
August 8, 1988: Stockholm
The Renju International Federation was founded in Stockholm, Sweden, on August 8, 1988. Tommy Maltell chaired the founding meeting in Sweden. Japan, the Soviet Union and Sweden entered the record together as founding members. The administration of competition now had a cross-border organization.
The federation’s headquarters are in Stockholm, and its general assembly meets every two years. The headquarters give the organization a fixed address; the assembly gives its members a regular occasion to meet. For a game whose tournaments take place in different countries, both place and schedule matter.
The first Renju World Championship was held in Kyoto, Japan. The federation’s founding city and its first championship city were not the same. Stockholm belongs to the organizational record, Kyoto to the competitive one. Set the two cities side by side, and you can see more of the federation’s early work than a final result alone would show.
The names beside 1988
Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus all appear on the federation’s list with a 1988 admission date. At the time, each was a Soviet republic. Reading the names today, it is easy to forget that the political map looked different when they were first entered.
The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and Russia succeeded to its seat in 1992. The list therefore contains both Soviet republics admitted in 1988 and the country that later took over a founding seat. The dates and the seat record different things. Read them as one, and you miss the change.
A membership list preserves the geography of the moment it was written.
The list continues. China joined in 1996; Chinese Taipei and Uzbekistan in 1999; South Korea in 2001. An admission date cannot tell you when people in a place first played the game. It can tell you when a federation there entered this international organization’s records.
The Czech Republic, Finland and Canada are all listed under 2003. Poland follows in 2009, Macau and Turkey in 2015, Greece in 2016 and Mongolia in 2023. Read by year, this is neither a list centered on one region nor a story of expansion at a steady pace.
Who leads the federation now
The federation currently lists 21 member federations. Its president is Madli Mirme of Estonia; its two vice presidents are Norihiko Kawamura of Japan and Dmitry Epifanov of Russia. Countries corresponding to places in the founding record still appear among its leaders.
Secretary-General Aivo Oll is from Estonia, and Treasurer Stefan Karlsson is from Sweden. These posts are a reminder that the federation does more than publish results. There are meetings, records and daily business to attend to. The membership list tells you who belongs; the roster of officers tells you who is doing the work now.
Who is not on the list
The United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Spain do not appear on the federation’s membership list. That does not mean no one plays Gomoku in those places. A game can be familiar somewhere without a local federation appearing on this particular list.
Pente, published in the United States in 1977, offers another point of comparison. It is a commercial five-in-a-row board game with rules for capturing stones. Its path differs from the Renju federation’s: one is a game released as a product, the other an association built around rules, members and tournaments. Similar stones and lines do not produce the same organizational history.
The calendar shows the work
The federation’s calendar today includes a world championship and a world team championship. The 2026 World Team Championship was held in Armenia, where China took first and second place. A calendar turns a tournament into a record of place, event and result, leaving a trail of encounters among members.
The 2026 World Youth Championship is set for Dalian, China. The calendar also includes a World Youth Online Cup, a Correspondence World Championship and an international schoolchildren’s Gomoku Olympiad. In-person play, online play, correspondence games and events for different ages sit alongside one another. Their names give you a sense of the federation’s range.
Recent news on the Renju website carries the bylines of Ants Soosõrv and Aivo Oll, both from Estonia. After a tournament ends, someone still has to write down what happened so people elsewhere can know. From the first world championship in Kyoto to today’s regularly updated schedule, competition and recordkeeping have gone together.
Back at the board, placing a stone still asks you to look only at the lines and empty points before you. But if you want to know how that game reached tournament halls in different cities, the dates of its rules, the Stockholm founding record and the list that keeps growing are there to consult.
You can set up the board in a moment. To trace where the game has been, look to the rules and the list.