Endgames in Lichess puzzles

Pawn endgames are notorious for being very difficult. We can therefore assume that the higher your puzzle rating, the more frequently they occur. But is this really the case? And how about queen endgames, rook endgames, bishop endgames and knight endgames?

Pawn endgames

The proportion of pawn endgames increases with the difficulty level of the puzzles. Of the most difficult puzzles, about one in ten is a pawn endgame.

Queen endgames

Queen endgame puzzles are relatively rare and only occur slightly more frequently in puzzles with a higher degree of difficulty.

Rook endgames

Rook endgames are frequent in very easy puzzles and very difficult puzzles.

Bishop endgames

Bishop endgames are very rare in all difficulties compared to pawn endgames but the frequency increases very much with the difficulty of puzzles.

Knight endgames

The same applies to knight endgames.

Conclusion

As we expected the proportion of endgame puzzles increases with the difficulty of the puzzles. This applies in particular to pawn endgames and fits with the fact that endgames and especially pawn endgames are considered particularly difficult.

Some remarks

• I used the Lichess puzzles database from the 2nd February 2026 with 5,751,400 puzzles.
• I did not rely on the entries (e.g. rookEndgame) in the "themes" field but updated the "fen" field in that way that it took the first move from the "moves" field into account. That was necessary because this move is the blunder move from the opponent right before the puzzle starts. If this move e.g. takes our last rook and there are only pawns and kings left after this move it's a pawn endgame puzzle. With the original "fen" entry I would have counted it as a rook endgame.