Magnus Carlsen shared his thoughts on the likely favorites for the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026 in a Chess.com YouTube interview on December 24. He named Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura as the most likely to win the tournament and Praggnanandhaa R as the third favorite. Carlsen also noted that Vincent Keymer deserved to participate, but the qualification system does not account for previous close attempts.

Magnus Carlsen

Magnus Carlsen

Five-time world champion

“Just like last time, probably the old Americans (Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura) are the favorites. And then we got Pragg as third favorite. Then probably a pretty big drop off after that. Wei Yi is really good, but I don’t think he’s capable of winning enough games to win the Candidates. So, it’ll be interesting to see.

I would have loved to see some more big names in the field, but then again, if you didn’t qualify, you didn’t qualify. Maybe this system should kind of account for somebody like Vincent who was really close to qualifying a lot of times. And I guess he and Arjun and a few others will have to await their turns, but we’ll see. It’s always interesting to follow.”

The FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026 takes place from March 29 to April 15 at the Cap St Georges Hotel and Resort in Pegeia, Cyprus. The winner will challenge Gukesh Dommaraju for the world title at the World Chess Championship 2026.

Credit: Chess.com