The lineups for the FIDE Grand Swiss tournament, to be held in Samarkand from September 2 to 16 this year, are missing plenty of big names, including former world champions like Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren, and Vishy Anand besides world no 2 Hikaru Nakamura and world no 3 Fabiano Caruana. The FIDE Grand Swiss is a prestigious event where the top two qualifiers in both the Open and the Women’s competition will qualify for the 2026 Candidates tournament, where the challenger for the title of World Champion will be determined. The FIDE Grand Swiss is the event that helped Vidit Gujrathi and Vaishali Rameshbabu secure spots at the Candidates tournaments in Toronto in 2023.
The FIDE Grand Swiss will have 172 players taking part, of which 116 will be in the open section while 56 will compete in the women’s tournament. There are 12 Indians in the open section out of the 101 players who have qualified (the rest of the 15 players will get picked by nomination from organisers or the FIDE president or continental quotas). World champion Gukesh leads the Indians, along with Arjun Erigaisi and Praggnanandhaa. The other Indians who will be in action are: Vidit Santosh Gujrathi, Pentala Harikrishna, Nihal Sarin, Raunak Sadhwani, Murali Karthikeyan, Abhimanyu Puranik, Aryan Chopra, Leon Luke Mendonca, and SL Narayanan. Meanwhile, the women’s event has Humpy Koneru, Harika Dronavalli, Vaishali Rameshbabu, Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal in the fray.
The time control for each game is: 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for the next 20 moves, followed by 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting from move 1.
World chess champion Gukesh D poses with a horse during the Norway Chess Games day at the recent Norway Chess tournament in Stavanger. (Express Photo by Amit Kamath)
Interestingly, a player like Carlsen could not have qualified for the event because as per the regulations in place by FIDE, only players who played at least 30 rated games counted in any of the 12 standard rating periods from July 2024 to June 2025 are eligible. Carlsen has sworn off of classical chess and only makes an exception for the Norway Chess event at his home country. But had he expressed an inclination to compete at the event, he could have earned a spot through nomination, since the FIDE president has six FIDE wildcards to allot while the local organiser too will have five spots at their disposal.
The prize fund in the Open is $625,000 (increased from $460,000 in 2023) and in the Women’s competition features a $230,000 prize fund (up from $140,000 in 2023).
While the world’s top 3 ranked players are missing, the Indians will have to battle their way against some top players like Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Alireza Firouzja, Boris Gelfand, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Anish Giri, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Levon Aronian, Vladimir Fedoseev, Hans Niemann, Vincent Keymer and Javokhir Sindarov.
