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Chess digest, Sep. 12–16: Samarkand Olympiad opens, Ganges Grandmasters crowned, Topalov beats Kasparov

The 46th Chess Olympiad opens in Samarkand with a record 400 teams, the Ganges Grandmasters win their first Global Chess League title, and Veselin Topalov beats Garry Kasparov 16-8 in Saint Louis.

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Coverage window: after 10:45 Sofia time on September 12 through 10:45 on September 16, 2026.

The 46th Chess Olympiad opened in Samarkand on Tuesday evening, and its first round starts today at 3 p.m. local time, 1 p.m. in Sofia. 1 2 A record 400 teams are entered in Uzbekistan, up from the 380 that went to Budapest in 2024. 3 Before that opening, two of the season's live events finished: the Ganges Grandmasters won their first Global Chess League title in Bengaluru, 4 and Veselin Topalov beat Garry Kasparov 16–8 in Saint Louis. 5

Samarkand opens the largest Olympiad yet

The opening ceremony filled the Boqiy Shahar amphitheatre, an open-air stage inside Samarkand's Eternal City complex, with more than 2,000 spectators on September 15. The programme ran for nearly two hours and put more than 100 musicians and over 200 dancers and singers on stage. Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov read greetings from the President of Uzbekistan, and FIDE interim president Viswanathan Anand followed with a five-minute address. Zhu Chen, the ninth women's world champion, and Uzbek grandmaster Rustam Kasimdzhanov drew the colours that decide which teams have white on first board in the opening round. 1

Delegations and spectators seated in the Boqiy Shahar amphitheatre during the opening ceremony of the 46th Chess Olympiad

Members of national delegations in the amphitheatre on September 15. Photo: Rafal Oleksiewicz and Michal Walusza, via ChessBase.

The tournament is the biggest the Olympiad has held: 208 teams in the open section and 192 in the women's event, 400 in all, against the previous record of 380 set in Budapest in 2024. Eleven rounds run from September 16 to 27, with games at 3 p.m. local time and one rest day on September 22. 3 2 Each match is played over four boards under the standard Olympiad time control of 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and 30 minutes for the rest, with a 30-second increment from move one. 6

India defend both titles, having won the open and women's events in Budapest. Hosts Uzbekistan, the surprise winners in 2022, start third in the open seeding behind the United States and India, while India, Georgia, Kazakhstan and China head the women's field. 6 India's captain Srinath Narayanan told FIDE that continuity and depth are what his team has going for it: "Defending an Olympiad title is always a tough challenge. But this Indian team has a lot going for it." 3

Samarkand also hosts the FIDE Congress from September 20 to 27, with the General Assembly and its elections on September 26 and 27. 7 The 3rd FIDE Chess Olympiad for People with Disabilities, a record 41 teams representing players with visual, hearing and physical impairments, was already under way in the city. 3

Ganges Grandmasters take the Global Chess League

The fourth season of the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League ended on September 13 with a two-leg final in Bengaluru. The Ganges Grandmasters, led on the icon board by Ian Nepomniachtchi, drew the first leg 3–3 and won the second 4–2, taking the title 7–5 on aggregate and leaving defending champions Alpine APL Pipers second. Third place went to FYERS American Gambits, who beat CheQ Mumba Masters by 3.5–2.5 and then 4–2. 4 8

Magnus Carlsen during the second leg of the Global Chess League final in Bengaluru

Magnus Carlsen during the second leg, with the venue screen beside him showing the board on which Stavroula Tsolakidou's game against Humpy Koneru finished 0–1. Photo: ChessBase India, via ChessBase.

The decisive games came in the second leg, which Ganges played with the black pieces on all six boards. Levon Aronian had given Ganges the lead in the first leg by beating Anish Giri, and Volodar Murzin levelled it for the Pipers by beating Leon Luke Mendonca, so the teams returned level at 3–3. In the second leg Nepomniachtchi was heading for defeat against Carlsen when the Norwegian played 28.Qxb5?; Nepomniachtchi answered with the bishop sacrifice 29...Bxf2+, took over the position and won after 39 moves. 4 8

The match point came on the women's boards. Stavroula Tsolakidou was under pressure against Humpy Koneru until Humpy chose 44.Kb2?? in a time scramble, the only losing king move; Tsolakidou converted the win and sealed the title. "It's special winning against the defending champions; now we gotta win it ourselves next year," she said. The 25-year-old Greek took the Player of the Tournament award, her team-mate Polina Shuvalova scored 7/10 for the highest individual total of the season, and Aronian credited coach Adhiban Baskaran's strategy with steering the team through the final. The champions take the largest share of the league's $1 million prize fund. 8 4 9

Topalov beats Kasparov 16–8

Veselin Topalov won the 2026 Clutch Chess: The Legends Chess960 match at the Saint Louis Chess Club, finishing 16–8 ahead of Garry Kasparov after the third and final day on September 13. The match carried a $144,000 prize fund, with wins worth one point on day one, two points on day two and three points on the final day, plus $1,000, $2,000 and $3,000 bonuses for each win, carried over to the last two games whenever a game was drawn. 10 11

The blitz games decided the match. Across the six blitz games Topalov scored 11 points to Kasparov's one, winning five of them; his only blitz loss came on the first day, and he won both blitz games on the final day, when each win was worth three points. Kasparov kept the match alive by winning the first rapid game of the last day, cutting the lead to 8.5–6.5, but Topalov then drew game ten and won game eleven to reach 13 points and clinch with a game to spare. Topalov finished with $90,000, the $70,000 winner's share plus bonus money; Kasparov took $54,000. 5 10 11

"I try to be practical. I am not very good in time scrambles. Garry tries to find the best moves. It is just not practical," Topalov said of a match in which clock handling mattered as much as the Chess960 starting positions. Kasparov, who turns 64 next year, left the door open to another match: "I wasn't quite at my best in the openings, but today I played better and I still think I could have played even better." 5 11

Antón Guijarro wins Madrid unbeaten, Oro is third

David Antón Guijarro won the second Legends & Prodigies tournament in Madrid, which ended with its tenth round on September 12. Antón Guijarro scored 7.5/10 without losing a game, five wins and five draws, finishing a point and a half clear and posting a performance rating of 2756. He won both of his games against Diego Flores and Ivan Sokolov, added a win over José Cuenca Jiménez, and drew the four games he played against Faustino Oro and José Eduardo Martínez Alcántara. 12 13

Faustino Oro and José Eduardo Martínez Alcántara shaking hands before a game

Faustino Oro (left) and José Eduardo Martínez Alcántara before a blitz game earlier in 2026; in Madrid they finished third and second behind David Antón Guijarro. Photo: ChessBase India / Amruta Mokal, via ChessBase.

Martínez Alcántara, the Mexican grandmaster, finished second on 6/10. Oro, playing his first tournament as a grandmaster after FIDE confirmed his title at the start of the month, lost to Diego Flores early in the second half and drew his remaining games to finish third on 5.5/10, with a performance rating of 2618. Sokolov and Flores shared fourth and fifth on 4/10. Both Antón Guijarro and Oro go straight from Madrid to Samarkand: Antón Guijarro plays board one for Spain in his sixth Olympiad, while Oro joins Argentina's team on board five for his first. 12 13

A nine-round B tournament ran alongside the main event, and Argentina's Francisco Fiorito won it with 7/9, a point ahead of Diego Macias Pino and Pablo Almagro Llamas. 12

Geneva gets the world-title match

FIDE confirmed the regulations for the Salesforce FIDE World Championship Match 2026, where Gukesh D defends the title against Javokhir Sindarov from November 22 to December 13. The match goes to the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny, above Lake Geneva, the first world championship match in Switzerland since Brissago in 2004. Both players will be 20 when it begins, which FIDE describes as the youngest world championship contest in history. 14

The programme opens with media day and the opening ceremony on November 22, and the first classical game follows on November 24. Up to 14 classical games run to December 11, with the first player to 7.5 points taking the title, and a tiebreak day on December 12 if the score is level at 7–7. Each player receives $200,000 for every game won and the rest of the $2.5 million prize fund is split equally; a 7.5–6.5 finish with 13 decisive games, or a win in the tiebreaks, pays the champion $1.3 million and the runner-up $1.2 million. 14

Draw offers become legal only after Black's 40th move; before that point, a claim of threefold repetition or stalemate goes to the Chief Arbiter or a Deputy Chief Arbiter. The time control is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest, with a 30-second increment from move 41. Gukesh won the title in Singapore in December 2024, beating Ding Liren 7.5–6.5 in the final game at 18; Sindarov qualified by winning the 2026 Candidates Tournament in Cyprus with 10/14 and now becomes the first Uzbek to play for the undisputed title. 14

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Salesforce becomes FIDE's title sponsor and technological partner in the federation's biggest contract with a private company to date. The multi-year agreement covers the 2026 and 2028 world title matches and the 2027 Women's World Championship match. 15
Georgios Makropoulos has died at 72. The seven-time Greek champion (1971–1985) led Greece's federation from 1982 to 2021, served as FIDE general secretary from 1990 to 1996 and deputy president from 1996 to 2015, and was acting president from 2015 until 2018. He was elected a FIDE vice president in 2022 and was a candidate for one of four elected vice-president seats at this month's General Assembly. 16
Antarctica will hold its first FIDE-rated tournament. Six players representing the six inhabited continents travel to the ice in January 2027, with rounds on the Antarctic plateau before the event ends at the Geographic South Pole. Nigel Short, the 61-year-old former world championship challenger and FIDE's director for chess development, heads the field. 17
Sina Movahed won his third Titled Tuesday of the year on September 15, beating Vincent Keymer on tiebreaks after both scored 9.5/11. Movahed collected $2,500 for first place; with nobody finishing on 11/11, the perfect-score bounty rises to $4,250 for next week. 18
Hikaru Nakamura won his 66th Bullet Brawl on September 12, finishing on 184 points, 42 clear of IM Yoseph Theolifus Taher. The weekly arena returns on September 19. 19

What to watch next

Date & time (Europe/Sofia)	Event & location	Checkpoint
September 16, 13:00	46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand	Round 1 in both sections; rounds follow daily at the same time through September 21. 2
September 22	46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand	Rest day. 2
September 23–26, 13:00	46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand	Rounds 7 to 10; round 11 starts at 09:00 Sofia on September 27, followed by the closing ceremony. 2
September 26–27	FIDE General Assembly, Samarkand	The presidential election and the vote for four elected vice-president seats, held during the Olympiad. 7
September 19, 19:00	Bullet Brawl, online	The weekly arena returns after Nakamura's 66th win. 19
November 22	Salesforce FIDE World Championship Match, Cologny	Opening ceremony, with the first game of Gukesh D against Javokhir Sindarov on November 24. 14