Is the format used in the World Championship cycle fair?

The 2026 Candidates Tournament is taking shape. Javokhir Sindarov, Wei Yi and Andrey Esipenko have now qualified from the World Cup. From the Grand Swiss, Anish Giri and Matthias Bluebaum secured their spots. Fabiano Caruana is in as winner of the 2024 FIDE Circuit, and Hikaru Nakamura will take part as the highest-rated player. And if there are no further unexpected developments, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu will take the spot as winner of the 2025 FIDE Circuit.

In this video course, Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explores the fascinating world of King’s Indian and Pirc structures with colours reversed, often arising from the French or Sicilian.
The King’s Indian Defence is one of the most dynamic openings in chess – and Pirc structures share much of the same DNA. With colours reversed (the King’s Indian Attack), these setups can be just as powerful. What may look modest at first often transforms into highly complex middlegames, where timing, precision, and a deep feel for dynamics make all the difference.
Free video sample: Introduction
Free video sample: Misplaced Pieces

The field looks as follows:

The Elo ratings were taken from the 2700 live list of 27 November 2025.

The winner of the tournament will then play a World Championship match against Gukesh, currently number 10 in the world rankings with an Elo rating of 2754. Gukesh won the title from Ding Liren, who at present is number 16 in the world rankings with an Elo of 2734.

If one looks at the Elo ratings and world ranking positions of recent world champions, one encounters a problem. In chess, the world title has great significance and is more or less equated with “the best chess player in the world”. That has not always been true in the more distant past, but in the eras of world champions Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand and Carlsen – a period of roughly 50 years – it was mostly the case. Ideally, the world champion dominates the other players, and these champions did so for a long time. For a fringe sport like chess, it is important to have a prominent figurehead, preferably a world champion who also holds the title for an extended period.

The world’s best chess player, Magnus Carlsen, no longer wishes to play the World Championship cycle in classical games. One can understand that. In ten years, Carlsen had to play six World Championship matches, on average almost one every one and a half years.

In 2013, for the up-and-coming Carlsen, there was still a worthwhile gain to be had: the title. Carlsen was the clear number one in the world rankings, but in the following World Championship matches he could only really lose. Had things gone badly, the best chess player would have been rid of the world title. If he won, that was “normal”. At times it was very close. But six World Championship matches in ten years are simply too many. In this respect, Carlsen was overstretched and played into exhaustion by FIDE.

Looking at the field of the next Candidates Tournament, one misses a number of top players. Under the current system, they have failed to qualify. The current number 4, Vincent Keymer, has narrowly missed out twice. Arjun Erigaisi (5) is not there, nor is Alireza Firouzja (7). Wesley So (11) is also absent. A few other young top players could easily be imagined in the Candidates Tournament as well – Richard Rapport, Nodirbek Abdusattorov or Jan-Krzysztof Duda, for example.

Of course, it can always happen that a top sportsman falls short on the way to his sporting goal. But when so many top players fail to reach the goal, and at least nominally weaker players take their place, one has to consider whether there are systemic reasons for this to happen. This is by no means intended to diminish the achievements of the players who have reached the Candidates Tournament. They fully deserve to be there and have delivered the best performances – in accordance with the qualification system.

In recent years, FIDE has tried out various qualification systems and discarded some of them. The long series of former Grand Prix tournaments was ultimately unsatisfactory. Players who no longer had any chance of qualifying during the course of the series played listless draws or stopped taking part. The tournaments were dull.

Instead, the Grand Swiss was introduced – a tournament with around 100 world-class players who, over eleven rounds under the Swiss system, compete for two places in the Candidates Tournament. Luck of the draw and form play an enormous role here. Such a tournament is a kind of lottery.

The World Cup has a completely different format, but again players’ form during the event, and above all nerves of steel, play a major role – as does stamina. The three-week World Cup is a tournament for young players with great stamina. Some players advance through the playoffs and their strength in rapid chess and blitz, and thus qualify for the Candidates Tournament. But no rapid or blitz games are played in the Candidates. The World Cup format, too, is a kind of lottery.

Let our authors show you how Carlsen tailored his openings to be able to outplay his opponents strategically in the middlegame or to obtain an enduring advantage into the endgame.

From 1997 to 2004 this knockout tournament was even the World Championship tournament. At the time, however, it was rightly abolished because of its high element of chance. The World Cup now lives on as a qualification tournament, and the number of qualification spots was recently increased from two to three.

So, in the Candidates, we now have five participants coming from two tournaments where luck or chance play a big role.

The qualification by Elo rating can also be criticised. When Ding qualified for the 2022 Candidates via this path, he first had to quickly play a series of tournament games so that his rating would be recognised. Hikaru Nakamura likewise played too few classical games over the past year for FIDE to accept his Elo for Candidates qualification. He took part in a series of weak “Mickey Mouse tournaments” in order to reach the required number of games. The FIDE regulations allowed this. In the meantime, FIDE has made adjustments.

At least two places are awarded to players who have qualified through a whole series of strong tournaments, the winners of the 2024 and 2025 FIDE Circuits, Fabiano Caruana and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. But this path has its shortcomings as well, since strong performances in team events are not taken into account. Vincent Keymer played superb tournaments at the European Team Championship and the European Club Cup. In the FIDE Circuit, however, team events are not included.

The winner of the next Candidates Tournament will challenge world champion Gukesh. Statistically, Nakamura or Caruana would be clear favourites as challengers, while Praggnanandhaa, Giri and Wei Yi would be slight favourites. Only against Sindarov, Esipenko and Bluebaum would Gukesh be considered the favourite. Already at the last Candidates, Nakamura – who now sees himself more as a streamer than as a tournament player – remarked that it is easier to win the World Championship match than the Candidates Tournament.

From these considerations, it should be clear that FIDE has apparently not yet found the best system for its World Championship. Perhaps a look at chess history would help. From 1948 to 1993, FIDE determined the world champion with a system that worked well. From zonal tournaments, the best players qualified for interzonals, and there the Candidates were determined. The winner of the Candidates’ matches challenged the world champion. Whether one opts for Candidates matches or a Candidates Tournament may be secondary. But the path to that stage seems to have been more sustainable and fair than the current system. It could certainly be modified, perhaps using national championships as a starting point instead of zonals. Above all, however, the World Championship cycle should be lengthened, so that the world champion is not overtaxed as Carlsen was. In the past, a World Championship cycle lasted three years. That was not bad.

With the organisers of Norway Chess, FIDE has agreed a new “Total Chess” World Championship, a kind of triathlon with classical chess, rapid chess and blitz included. The winner of this competition will also be allowed to take part in the Candidates Tournament the year after next. There is nothing against this competition as such. But whether it makes sense to link this format to the classical World Championship is rather open to question.