Best Catalan Opening Courses

If you want to play the Catalan as White, Jan Werle's two-volume "The Catalan, an opening repertoire for life" on ChessBase is the best-documented course for the price, because its page lists both the Open and Closed Catalan line by line for EUR 79.90 (as of 8 November 2026). GM Ivan Cheparinov's two Modern Chess parts go deeper, at EUR 158 (from pages we read earlier and could not re-open). Neither answers the Queen's Indian or Bogo-Indian replies your move order allows. Coaches commonly suggest learning the Catalan's ideas from free master games first at lower ratings, which is received wisdom rather than a measured result.

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Test depth: Public information only. Nobody at ChessCourseFinder has taken any of these courses. Facts below come from seller pages read on 8 November 2026 or from search listings, labelled as such.

How we picked and ranked these

The Catalan is a smaller market than most openings on this site: we counted 12 distinct paid courses, 1 of them a ChessBase one-hour micro-course. We kept courses where a page states the author, price and some line detail, and ranked by how much of the opening a reader can verify before paying. Counts for Chessable, Modern Chess and TheChessWorld are lower bounds, and we saw no dedicated Catalan course at ChessMood, TheChessWorld or Udemy.

Do you need a Catalan course at your level?

Probably not below about 1600, on our judgement rather than measured evidence. The Catalan is a positional opening, and much of its value comes from understanding why White's g2 bishop and queenside pressure matter, which free annotated master games can show. Above that, a course becomes useful once you have committed to 1.d4 with c4, Nf3 and g3 and need Black's replies sorted. If you have not decided on 1.d4 yet, settle that first.

A Catalan course is not a 1.d4 repertoire

This is the point most easily missed before paying. You only get a Catalan if Black plays ...e6 and ...d5 against your d4 and c4 set-up, and Black has several ways not to do that.

• 1...Nf6 2.c4 g6 heads for a King's Indian or Grunfeld, with no Catalan in sight.
• 2...c5 leads to Benoni territory.
• 1...d5 2.c4 c6 is a Slav, where Black can take on c4 or keep the pawn chain so that the g2 bishop bites on granite. Marin's course targets those set-ups.
• 1...d5 2.c4 dxc4 is a Queen's Gambit Accepted.

So plan on the Catalan being one chapter of a 1.d4 repertoire. The complete White repertoire courses page is the better starting point if you need the rest as well, and our Queen's Gambit page covers related structures.

The move-order choice: 3.Nf3 or 3.g3

After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6, White chooses between two paths, and the choice decides what else you must learn.

Wikipedia's Catalan article describes the same trade: 3.Nf3 gives Black those two extra options, and 3.g3 avoids them but allows a Modern Benoni in which the fianchetto system is "not very critical". The only course we read that sells a remedy is Cheparinov's 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 course (EUR 59, 2h 57m, May 2023), which has a chapter on 3.g3 Bb4+ and nine on the Benoni. Werle's two volumes both start from 3.Nf3 orders (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.g3 and 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.c4 d5 4.g3).

Move order also matters in the other direction. White players who begin 1.Nf3 or 1.c4 can reach Catalan positions as well, usually called the Neo-Catalan; Daniel King's Black course includes a system against 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 e6 3.g3.

Theory load at club level

Moderate to high on one specific branch. When Black takes on c4 (the Open Catalan), White has to know how to regain the pawn or justify leaving it, and those lines are concrete; the Closed Catalan is mostly about structure and slow plans. Be careful with labels, because sellers file the same line differently. The delayed capture 4...Be7 5.Bg2 0-0 6.0-0 dxc4 sits in Werle's Volume 1 (Open), but in Part 2 of Cheparinov's course, so a buyer who takes only "the open part" of each gets different lessons. The scale also differs: Werle runs 16.5 hours, and Cheparinov's two parts 18h 41m.

Coverage matrix

"Listed" means the seller names that line on its page. "Not listed" means the contents we read leave it out. "Not stated" means the page gives no chapter detail.

Bologan's page says the DVD "covers all of Black's replies to the Catalan" and that some can transpose to the Tarrasch System and the Queen's Indian, but it gives no contents list, so we cannot check that.

The best-documented Catalan courses

Listed prices, 8 November 2026. Check them on the seller's page before you pay. Per-hour figures are calculated from the listed price and time. The Modern Chess rows (Cheparinov) come from pages read earlier that day; Modern Chess returned HTTP 429 when we went back to re-open them, so treat those rows, the Cheparinov column in the matrix and the Cheparinov figures in the text as unconfirmed.

Chessable also lists Alonso's Catalan, and Modern Chess lists Catalan courses by GM Mihail Marin and GM Arjun Kalyan, seen in search or author-page listings only. The 1,063-variation count on Srinath's course is the seller-stated size; it is a measure of breadth, not of how much you need to memorise.

Modern Chess's terms, updated 29 December 2025, make sales final once you have access, and each part we read offers a free preview. Adding Cheparinov's 3.g3 course to his two main parts costs EUR 217 for 21h 38m (79 + 79 + 59; about EUR 10.03 per hour, calculated). Werle's bundle with no extra course is EUR 79.90, so depth is the real price question. See the Modern Chess review and the price-per-hour calculator.

What these courses leave out

• The Queen's Indian and Bogo-Indian. A 3.Nf3 Catalan player needs them. Neither main Catalan course lists them.
• Everything outside ...e6. The King's Indian, Grunfeld, Benoni and Slav need their own preparation.
• The Semi-Slav and Triangle in detail. Only Marin's narrow course targets them.
• Black's point of view at low cost. King's course is the only page-read option for Black and it dates from 2016.

The free route

Master games are the classic free route: Lichess has no paid tier, so you can keep your own Catalan lines in a Lichess study. Check our free Chessable courses list too, though we found no Catalan title confirmed free. A Chessable "Short & Sweet: Shankland's Neo-Catalan" appeared in search listings marked for PRO members, which is in line with Chessable's January 2025 change to Short & Sweet access, so do not count on it being free.

Who should skip a course for the Catalan

Skip it if you are under about 1600 (a coaching convention, not a measured result), if you play 1.e4, or if you have not decided your first move yet. Compare it with the English if you want a flexible 1.c4 system (see the English Opening page), and see the Slav page to understand one of Black's main ways of sidestepping it.

What the seller's pages do not tell you

• None of the main Catalan pages we read warns you which replies fall outside its scope; you find that out from the contents.
• The cheapest route to the Open Catalan alone is Werle's Volume 1 at EUR 49.90, and the pair costs EUR 79.90, so Volume 2 adds EUR 30 when bought as a bundle.
• Werle's length figures conflict (9 hours in the specification versus 16.5 hours from the volume descriptions), so price per hour could be about EUR 8.88 or EUR 4.84.
• Bologan's White course is dated 2011 and has no line list. Cheparinov's and Werle's are the recent ones with line lists.
• Marin's description says Black has to "accept the pawn sacrifice on c4" to avoid a passive set-up, which is really a statement about how sharp his repertoire is; the title does not hint at that.

See how to choose a chess course, the ChessBase FritzTrainer review and all opening pages.