Home · Extensions · .pgn

`.pgn`

1 claimant 1 primary 0 secondary unambiguous primary

SWH popularity

Distinct files in the full Software Heritage archive (2026-06-04 export), dated by first appearance, following Desmazières, Di Cosmo, Lorentz (MSR 2025). Case-aggregated. citation.

3.0M

total files

2.7M

first seen 2021–2025 (90.9%)

2023

median year (half its files since)

Case variants in archive: .pgn (3.0M), .PGN (8.9K) — aggregated above.

Attribution status

This extension is attributed to Portable Game Notation as primary by 1 authoritative claim.

Authoritative sources: ✗ Linguist · no claim ✗ Pygments · no claim ✓ Wikidata · Q205748 ✗ Wikipedia · no claim

Disagree or have a correction? Open a labelling issue.

Prior manual labels (1)

Label	Annotator	Status	Evidence (excerpt)
pl/portable-game-notation Portable Game Notation — ref	@acherm	new	Portable Game Notation: a notation language for chess (and chess variants) with a formal grammar (tag-pair header + SAN move list). Standard	discuss

Claimants (2)

Languages that list .pgn among their extensions. Strength reflects whether the upstream source treated it as their primary extension.

Language	Source	Strength
Portable Game Notation	repo_meta	primary
Portable Game Notation	wikidata	primary

Wikidata says… (1)

File formats, image formats, audio codecs and other non-PL entities that claim .pgn on Wikidata (property P1195) or in the Wikipedia infobox. Source: data/derived/external_extension_index.csv. Click Use as new PL on any row to open the Add-PL form pre-filled with that entry's name, Wikipedia/Wikidata URL, and this extension — one submission creates the PL + claim.

Right entry isn't listed? Add manually ↗

Format	Class (Wikidata `P31`)	Suggested label	MIME	Notes	Action
Portable Game Notation Q205748 computer data format for recording chess games	file format	—	`application/vnd.chess-pgn; application/x-chess-pgn`	—	Use as new PL ↗

SWH-mined examples (6)

Real archived programs with this extension, byte-verified against the SWH archive, grouped by predicted language and by how the prediction was made. Useful for deciding what this extension actually is when the attribution is uncertain.

Portable Game Notation (6) — 6 via unique-primary

wch08ak.pgn · 38963 B · seen 1766× in SWH

predicted: Portable Game Notation via unique-primary

swh:1:cnt:f3d6cb4a3da3a0c5e31e2e7a16290837f771cb18;origin=https://github.com/ornicar/pgn4web;anchor=swh:1:rev:9e20e9aea7d2c55671c54f4ddfc299e60a2811f7;path=/wch08ak.pgn

Open in SWH · Raw bytes

live-placeholder.pgn · 485 B · seen 1421× in SWH

predicted: Portable Game Notation via unique-primary

swh:1:cnt:4112e25f64793e8ece3c2635051f31641f721f19;origin=https://github.com/ornicar/pgn4web;anchor=swh:1:rev:1258c29af72f90b5a35854434f04f869f716246d;path=/live-placeholder.pgn

Open in SWH · Raw bytes

live-no-event.pgn · 517 B · seen 1023× in SWH

predicted: Portable Game Notation via unique-primary

swh:1:cnt:c7368806aaf86000bf8cd24337d16f35561944ac;origin=https://github.com/ornicar/pgn4web;anchor=swh:1:rev:1258c29af72f90b5a35854434f04f869f716246d;path=/live-no-event.pgn

Open in SWH · Raw bytes

tilb98r2.pgn · 14479 B · seen 854× in SWH

predicted: Portable Game Notation via unique-primary

swh:1:cnt:e372658601f14114f56b1581caf3f3a5f5b06a51;origin=https://github.com/ornicar/pgn4web;anchor=swh:1:rev:1258c29af72f90b5a35854434f04f869f716246d;path=/tilb98r2.pgn

Open in SWH · Raw bytes

single_game.pgn · 851 B · seen 153× in SWH

predicted: Portable Game Notation via unique-primary

swh:1:cnt:e6d025307daf2316e9dde082bf49eecb0d5eb948;origin=https://github.com/tonyjongyoonan/enpoisson;anchor=swh:1:rev:e19ff4bed37652a3eba6725262ee506ca78dbf8b;path=/research/single_game.pgn

Open in SWH · Raw bytes

knight_sac.pgn · 587 B · seen 141× in SWH

predicted: Portable Game Notation via unique-primary

swh:1:cnt:2395d5d940fc2661f61e90b2b97283a5fffdaf53;origin=https://github.com/tonyjongyoonan/enpoisson;anchor=swh:1:rev:03917ca35bf23da58e4e321eb9efe423f63422f1;path=/research/knight_sac.pgn

Open in SWH · Raw bytes