Keymer joins the elite
Statistical overview (classical chess)
- Rating in January 2025: 2733
- Rating in January 2026: 2776
- Rating gain: +43 Elo points
- Total classical games: 82
- Total points: 54
- Score percentage: 65.85%
- Wins: 35
- Draws: 38
- Losses: 9
At the start of 2025, Vincent Keymer was already established as one of the strongest players of his generation. Over the course of the year, however, he made the decisive step from elite prospect to full member of the world’s top tier. By the end of the season, he had climbed from world number 20 to world number 4, entering the top 10 for the first time during the Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters in August. Achieving this transition before turning 21, on 15 November, marked a milestone that many GMs never reach.
The early months of the year were relatively subdued. Alongside regular appearances in the German Chess Bundesliga for OSG Baden-Baden, Keymer recorded solid but unspectacular results in major invitationals. At the Tata Steel Masters, he finished on 6/13, while the Prague Chess Masters saw him score 4½/9. These performances stabilised his rating, but did not yet hint at the surge that would follow.
A clear turning point came in May. Keymer won the German Chess Championship with an impressive 7/9, defeating direct rivals Matthias Bluebaum and Frederik Svane. Shortly afterwards, he confirmed that result by taking outright first place at the Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters, again with 7/9. A win with black against Awonder Liang in round seven lifted him into the world top 10 in the live ratings for the first time in his career, while his Tournament Performance Rating of 2917 underlined the scale of his breakthrough.
September brought one of the most significant – and emotionally complex – events of Keymer’s season. At the FIDE Grand Swiss, he scored 7½/11 and gained a further 6.9 rating points, entering the event already as the fifth seed. He finished half a point behind the winner Anish Giri, tied with two others, but missed out on the crucial second qualifying spot for the Candidates on tiebreaks. A serious blunder in a winning position against Bluebaum in the penultimate round proved particularly costly.
Vincent Keymer at the FIDE Grand Swiss in Samarkand | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza
Despite that setback, Keymer closed the classical season strongly. In October, he scored 7/9 for Germany at the European Team Championship, where the team finished fourth, and followed this with 5/6 for Novy Bor at the European Club Cup, helping the club to third place. His final classical appearances came at the FIDE World Cup, where he reached the fourth round, scoring 4½/6 in classical games before being eliminated by Andrey Esipenko in the rapid tiebreaks.
Although missing qualification for the 2026 Candidates Tournament was a clear disappointment, 2025 stands out as a defining year in Vincent Keymer’s career. He rose to fourth place in the world rankings, behind only Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana, and demonstrated sustained success against the strongest opposition.
Alongside Arjun Erigaisi and Alireza Firouzja, he is among the most prominent elite players to miss out on the Candidates, but his progress in 2025 firmly established him as a long-term fixture at the very top of world chess.
Vincent Keymer – Classical chess games 2025
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