What will be the future of chess?

I think personally the future of chess may include a 9th piece, and 81 squares. This would mean that White starts on the 1st rank and Black starts on the 9th rank. Maybe more pieces, pawn, rooks, queens or even kings could be formed? You never know.

It's nice to see how chess is growing fast, and I even think it will grow in a small margin. Could there be more rules on the board?

It'd be interesting if the future of chess comes out.

The future of chess has long since arrived and it is called chess variants.
There you will find the ninth, tenth, fiftieth and any other pieces on 81, 144, 256 and so on squares.
Standard chess has long since lost its flavor of creativity and uncertainty.
Chess has always been prized for its creativity, but AI has shown that many "brilliant" moves are simply precise calculations.
What else?
The opening theory has become too deep: top players memorize hundreds of variations, but even the slightest deviation from the “ideal” line (known to the AI) leads to defeat.
In the endgame, Nalimov tables (ideal game databases) eliminate human error - the game comes down to memorization.
Viewers are losing interest: if earlier games were commented on as drama, now they are analyzed as “right/wrong” from the point of view of the algorithm.
Classic chess is suffocating in the grip of AI, becoming a contest of memory rather than reason. But why cling to the past when you can break free from the mold?
Discover new chess variants in which there are no limits to the creativity of the human mind.

The game - rules and gameplay - is fine as it is, certanly for 99.999% of the playing population.

What I'm seeing in the city where I live and play are hundreds of ferocious juniors attending sessions, in person and in online classes, where they are fed lots and lots of puzzles, with the coach talking them though each one and what works and what doesn't work. Result? These kids see everything. Every pin and fork and skewer and discovered attack. They're then bringing this to their competitive games and tearing the adults to pieces.

Secondly, the speed of communication thanks to the internet. Years ago, an opening novelty from an obscure tournament in a minor Soviet republic would take weeks or months to make it through to the mainstream journals and be picked up by serious players. Nowadays, that same novelty played on a Thursday gets thrown at you by an eight-year-old at club night the following Monday.

Scary stuff if you're a grownup. But it confirms the game has an infinitely bright future.

When men get old and scared of losing to a younger generation, they invent new rules!
Capablanca wanted a 10X10 chessboard with extra pieces. Fischer came up with chess960. Carlsen persuaded another old man to pump millions into this format.
As long as classical chess is far from being played out, there's no need for a replacement. It produces the highest quality and the post-Carlsen generation are showing you can still produce lots of exciting fighting chess.

I think 11x11 board with the pieces Dragon, super queen and camel

@PawnRookQueenKing said in #1:

I think personally the future of chess may include a 9th piece, and 81 squares
And then I would leave chess and never touch it again.

Chess variants with larger boards and different pieces have existed for a long time. And there are hundreds, if not thousands for them. One of the least obscure variants is Capablanca chess, invented by Capablanca a century ago, which is played on a 10x8 board. It has two new pieces: the archbishop (a bishop + knight compound) and the chancellor (a rook + knight compound). It never got a lot of traction, although Lasker was a proponent.

Considering that variants which are around for long time, even variants invented by one of the greatest players, are hardly played, I don't have any high hopes this will be the future of Chess. Even Chess960, aka Fisher Random Chess, hasn't gotten much traction. It's only recently, with top players playing it for large sums of money that it gets some attention.

The chess world is very conservative, with lots of people bringing out the tar and feathers if anyone suggests any change. I've been playing chess for over half a century. Other than the temporary existence of a 100-move rule, the only change in rules I can remember was the introduction of the Fisher clock.

As has already been said, the problem concerns only the infinitesimal number of top players.
For what my opinion is worth, I think it is very difficult to change chess for them. Also because changing it drastically would simply become another game.
Rather than switching to variants ( but which of the many would satisfy everyone ? ), it would be much better to draw the opening by lot while continuing to play normal chess. But this would also generate more problems and dissatisfaction than it is intended to solve, so, if I were to guess, I also think that the future of chess will remain the present.

Maybe in a couple of centuries Vulcan Chess will take hold...

Personally, I think that the future of traditional chess will be to make it increasingly difficult in competitive mode so that high-level players will almost always draw, and I also think that there has been a popularization of chess960/fischer random chess.

@PawnRookQueenKing said in #1:

I think personally the future of chess may include a 9th piece, and 81 squares. This would mean that White starts on the 1st rank and Black starts on the 9th rank. Maybe more pieces, pawn, rooks, queens or even kings could be formed? You never know.

@TheMagnusAura said in #6:

And then I would leave chess and never touch it again.

Shogi or Japanese Chess is variation being played for many centuries in Japan, it has 81 squares and more type of pieces. In Japan it has more popularity than western Chess, there are official tourneys and titles in it.

@lizani said in #4:

As long as classical chess is far from being played out, there's no need for a replacement.

Variants can be partial replacement rather than full, it’s not obligatory to forget usual Chess — it is also one of the variants, though it’s most famous and one of the most balanced. Usefulness of other variants is explained here: https://chessvariants.com/why.html

@ErzyaKS said in #2:

The future of chess has long since arrived and it is called chess variants. <...>
Classic chess is suffocating in the grip of AI, becoming a contest of memory rather than reason. But why cling to the past when you can break free from the mold?
Discover new chess variants in which there are no limits to the creativity of the human mind.

так держать, продолжайте в том же духе ^)