FIDE Candidates Tournament for 2026

The Open tournament starts 29 March and runs through 16 April. FIDE Candidates 2026: Eight contenders, one dream

FIDE, stands for the Fédération Internationale des Échecs or the World Chess Federation in English. It is the governing body for chess on the world stage.

The winner of the tournament will have the right to compete against the reigning world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju of India, in the 2026 world championship match. The winner will also take home €70,000. The runner up will get €45,000. Third place will collect €25,000. The rest will receive some funds based on their score in the tournament.

The players, and their associated federation and current rating, are as follows:

• Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 2810)
• Fabiano Caruana (USA, 2795)
• Wei Yi (China, 2754)
• Anish Giri (Netherlands, 2753)
• Javokhir Sindarov (Uzbekistan, 2745)
• Praggnanandhaa R (India, 2741)
• Matthias Bluebaum (Germany, 2698)
• Andrey Esipenko (FIDE, 2698)

Esipenko is Russian, but is competing without association to that country or its chess federation.

Magnus Carlsen of Norway, with a current classical rating of 2840, also qualified for the tournament. He was world champion from 2013 through 2023, and has stopped competing for the classical world championship. He did not defend his title in 2023.

This year's tournament will be taking place in Cyprus, at the Cap St Georges Hotel and Resort in Pegeia.

The tournament is a double round robin, which means each player will play every other player twice, once playing as the white pieces, and once as black. As this is a classical tournament, as opposed to Rapid or Blitz Chess, players will have 120 minutes for the first 40 moves. This will be followed by 30 minutes sudden-death, with a 30 second increment for each move starting with the 41st move. (That is notated as 120/40, SD 30+30)