The prototype of the European Club Cup took place in 1956 in Yugoslavia where nine club and city teams arrived to compete in a round robin tournament. The host team Partizan won. But the very first official edition took place two decades later and 20 national champions competed in a knockout tournament. Each match consisted of two rounds played at six boards. German champions Solingen and Soviet Burevestnik tied in a match for gold. The competition was played in a three year cycle those times and then turned to a two year cycle. The Soviet teams kept monopolistic hegemony excluding 1982 edition when Spartacus of Hungary won and 1990 when Solingen won another tied championship along with CSKA Moscow.

The KO system hasn't been replaced until 1993 when number of participating teams grew from 30 up to impressive 50. The teams were split into seven knockout qualification groups and the seven winners joined by the host club composed the final group, which was a knockout competition itself too (in 1996 as much as 16 teams qualified for the championship final). As the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia collapsed many new strong teams emerged and ex-Soviet players spilled all over the world making the games somehow more competitive. No team won more that two times in the 1990s. The last big landmark by now was year 2000, when KO system was abolished and the Swiss system was adopted, making the games even more competetive and spectacular. The European Club Cup is one of most important items in the chess calendar since plenty of excellent players arrive every year to participate. Strongest clubs come from Russia, France, Germany, Poland and Israel.

The tournament is organized by European Chess Union under patronage of FIDE. System of play is seven round Swiss at six boards. There are no limits for foreigners in a team and many clubs actually rely solely on the foreigners. Each European federation has right to field one team and the participation is open to second team from federations that organize annual national team championships. On some rare occasions, a third team from a country may be accepted for federations who have exceptionally strong leagues, see FIDE handbook, chapter D.V.01, point 1.1 for details. The winners receive a Challenge Cup founded by ECU. The Cup is won in perpetuity in case a club wins it for the third time (so far only Bosna Sarajevo and CSKA Moscow managed to do it).

The winner list 1976-2006:

Clubs: 4x Bosna Sarajevo, 3x CSKA Moscow, 2x Burevestnik Moscow, 2x SG Solingen, 2x Lyon Oyonnax, 2x NAO Paris, 2x Tomsk-400, 1x Spartacus Budapest, 1x Trud Moscow, 1x Bayern Munich, 1x Yerevan City, 1x Sberbank Tatarstan Kazan, 1x Ladia Azov, 1x Panfox Breda, 1x Nikel Norilsk

Nations: 6x Soviet Union, 5x Russia, 4x France, 4x Bosnia & Herzegovina, 3x Germany, 1x Hungary, 1x Netherlands, 1x Armenia