The FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026 starts tomorrow at the Cap St Georges Hotel and Resort in Pegeia, Cyprus, running from March 29 to April 16. First round begins at 2:30 PM UTC. The Open and Women tournaments combined will feature 16 players from 12 countries.

Pairings for the first round:

1. 🇺🇸 Fabiano Caruana 🇺🇸 Hikaru Nakamura
2. 🇮🇳 Praggnanandhaa R 🇳🇱 Anish Giri
3. 🇩🇪 Matthias Bluebaum 🇨🇳 Wei Yi
4. 🇺🇿 Javokhir Sindarov 🇷🇺 Andrey Esipenko
1. 🇨🇳 Zhu Jiner 🇨🇳 Tan Zhongyi
2. 🇷🇺 Aleksandra Goryachkina 🇷🇺 Kateryna Lagno
3. 🇮🇳 Vaishali Rameshbabu 🇰🇿 Bibisara Assaubayeva
4. 🇮🇳 Divya Deshmukh 🇺🇦 Anna Muzychuk

The event features a 120+0 time control for the first 40 moves and 30+30 for the rest of the game over double Round-Robin between 8 players. In case of ties for first place, winner will be determined by Tiebreaks.

This tournament follows the 2024 edition held in Toronto, Canada. Gukesh Dommaraju won the tournament and defeated Ding Liren in the 2024 World Championship Match, becoming the youngest World Champion in history. The FIDE Candidates Tournament was established to determine the challenger for the title of World Champion and has been held since 1950.

Credit: Michal Walusza / FIDE