En passant in chess: the rule, and when you can use it
En passant is a pawn capture with a time limit on it. When an enemy pawn uses its two-square first move to slip straight past a square your pawn attacks, the en passant rule lets you take it as though it had only moved one square. You get that chance on your next move and never again. Tap the white pawn below: the dot on d6 is the capture.
When can you en passant?
Three things have to be true at the same time.
- Your pawn is on its fifth rank. Rank 5 for white, rank 4 for black: the row just past the middle of the board.
- An enemy pawn has just moved two squares and landed right beside it, side by side on that same rank, on a neighbouring file.
- You capture on your very next move. Play anything else first and the right to take that pawn is gone permanently.
The capture itself looks odd the first time. Your pawn moves diagonally forward onto the empty square the enemy pawn skipped over, and the enemy pawn is lifted off from beside you. It is the only move in chess where the piece you take is not standing on the square you land on.
Why does the chance disappear after one move?
Because the rule exists to undo one specific thing, and undoing it later would make no sense. Pawns originally moved one square at a time. The two-square first move came in later to get games started faster, and it opened a loophole: a pawn could sprint past an enemy pawn's guarded square without ever being attackable, which the old one-square game never allowed.
En passant closes that loophole and nothing else. The name is French for "in passing", and the capture answers the two-square move directly, so it has to be the immediate reply. Wait a move and you have accepted the position as it stands.
En passant from black's side
It works identically for both colours, one rank lower. Black's pawn has to be on rank 4, which is black's fifth rank counting from black's own side, and the white pawn has to have arrived beside it with a two-square move on the move just played.
How is en passant written in notation?
Like any other pawn capture: the file the capturing pawn came from, an x, and the square it lands on. The capture on the first board above is written exd6. Older scoresheets add "e.p." afterwards, giving exd6 e.p., but the move is unambiguous without it and most people drop it now. The square recorded is the one your pawn lands on, not the one the captured pawn was sitting on. The rest of the shorthand is on how to read chess notation.
How to play en passant on this site
Tap your pawn, then tap the empty square diagonally ahead of it. The board offers that square as a dot only when the capture is actually legal, so if the dot is there you can take it, and if it is not, you are a move too late. Dragging works the same way.
The one thing that surprises people is watching it happen: the captured pawn vanishes from beside you rather than from the square you moved to. That is the rule working correctly, not a bug. En passant is one of three special pawn moves, along with the two-square start and promotion, all of them on how pawns move. For everything else there is the rules of chess and the other move people find hard to believe, castling.
Frequently asked questions
What does en passant mean?
It is French for "in passing". The name describes the capture: you take an enemy pawn as it passes the square your pawn was guarding, as though it had stopped there.
Is en passant mandatory?
No. It is a capture like any other, so you take it if you want it. The only catch is that it is available on that one move, and declining it means declining it for good.
Can you en passant a piece other than a pawn?
No. Only a pawn can capture en passant, and only a pawn can be captured that way. A knight or a queen moving past your pawn is simply past it.
Can you en passant on any rank?
No. Your capturing pawn has to be on its own fifth rank, which is rank 5 for white and rank 4 for black. Anywhere else and the enemy pawn cannot have arrived by a two-square move in the first place.
Can you en passant a move later?
No. The right lasts exactly one move. If you play something else, even a check, the pawn beside you is safe from that pawn for the rest of the game.
Why did my pawn disappear?
Because the other player captured it en passant. Their pawn moved to the empty square just behind yours, and your pawn came off from beside it instead of from the square theirs landed on.
Is en passant a real rule?
Yes. It has been in the official rules of chess for centuries and is in the FIDE Laws of Chess today. Every chess program enforces it, including the boards on this page.
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