(TibetanReview.net, May28’25) – This year’s Gyalyum Chenmo Memorial Gold Cup (GCMGC) football tournament, the exile Tibetans’ top sporting event, will be dedicated to the 90th birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and will feature 16 teams.
Also, for the first time, this 30th edition of the tournament will be held under the affiliation of All India Football Federation (AIFF), India’s football governing body and a member of FIFA, the global football governing body, reported the Tibetan-language tibettimes.net May 28, citing Tibetan National Sports Association (TNSA).
The tournament will be held on the Upper TCV school ground in Dharamshala from Jun 1 to 11, ahead of the Dalai Lama’s Jul 6 birthday. The number of teams is stated to have been shortlisted to 16 in order to fit the entire tournament within this period.
Apart from two teams from North America, Europe, and Australia and one from Nepal, all the rest are from within India, including one from Upper TCV school as the host, and one from Mundgod Tibetan settlement as the defending champion.
Still, the Executive Director Mr Jangchup Gyaltsen of TNSA, which runs the tournament, has said many teams which had been absent from its previous tournaments for a long time, were also participating, while four of the five major Tibetan settlements in South India were also sending teams.
He has said the AIFF affiliation will be a new feature of this tournament.
Gyaltsen has said that under a new rule to be introduced from this year, in keeping with His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s general advice for showing concern for the environment, each player will be provided with an especially designed water bottle in order to avoid the use of commercially available bottled drinking water.
The first GCMGC football tournament was held on the Upper TCV school ground in 1981 and continued at various locations in the Tibetan settlements in India. It has been continuously held annually since 2006, except during the global Covid-19 pandemic outbreak of 2020.