This page is about the output: what a converted game actually is as a file, and what you can do with it once you have it. If you want the process rather than the format, start with Convert a chess scoresheet to PGN.
What you get
A .pgn file — plain text, a few kilobytes, readable by every chess program written in the last thirty years and by a text editor if you are curious.
[Event "City Open"]
[Site "Shanghai CHN"]
[Date "2026.03.14"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Li, Wei"]
[Black "Ivanova, Anna"]
[Result "1-0"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 1-0
Two parts: the seven-tag header in square brackets, and the movetext below it, separated by a blank line. That blank line is not decoration — leaving it out is the single most common reason an import fails.
The tags come from you
The header is filled from what you enter before exporting: players, event, site, date, result. Nothing recovers this later. A file full of [White "?"] is technically valid and practically useless the moment you have more than a dozen games, because you cannot search it.
Ten seconds per game, while the scoresheet is in front of you.
Where it opens
| Destination | How |
|---|---|
| Lichess | Paste at lichess.org/paste, or load into a Study. Step by step |
| Chess.com | Learn → Analysis → the PGN box. Step by step |
| ChessBase / SCID | File → Open, or import into a database |
| Anything else | It is text. Email it, paste it in a forum, drop it in any folder |
For engine analysis, Lichess and Chess.com will both run a full pass and mark the mistakes — which is usually the point of converting a game in the first place.
One file, many games
A single .pgn can hold a whole tournament: games separated by a blank line. Loading that into a Lichess Study makes each game its own chapter, which is the cheapest way to publish an event.
The account settings page also exports every game you have saved as one file, which is the format's other useful property — your archive is portable by definition.
When an import is rejected
Almost always one of five things:
- the blank line between header and movetext is missing;
- curly quotes from Word or WeChat instead of straight
"; - a date written
2026-03-14instead of2026.03.14; - an illegal move — the importer stops at the move number, which tells you exactly which entry to check against the sheet;
- no result token (
1-0,0-1,1/2-1/2,*) at the end.
Related
- Photo to PGN — the input side: getting a photo that converts cleanly
- Scan chess notation — how the handwriting becomes SAN in the first place
- What is PGN? — the format explained in full