2025 FIDE World Cup Pairings, Venue Revealed

It’s now less than a month until the $2 million 2025 FIDE World Cup begins on November 1, with a 206-player field topped by the Indian trio of World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju and GMs Arjun Erigaisi and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. The event will take place in the Resort Rio, in Arpora, Goa, and the full pairings bracket has been announced. The top 50 sit out round one, but in round two we could already get matchups such as GM Vidit Gujrathi vs. IM Faustino Oro and GM Divya Deshmukh vs. GM Nihal Sarin.

FIDE World Cup Venue Announced

It was announced just over a month ago that the 2025 FIDE World Cup would be taking place in the Indian coastal state of Goa, where the rainy season will be over in November, with average high temperatures of around 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit). We now also know the exact venue, Resort Rio in Arpora, which is a 10-minute drive from the beach. 

Armageddon Returns To FIDE World Cup Format

This is the 11th edition of the event in its current format, with GM Levon Aronian the only player to have won the event twice—and the only winner returning in 2025.

FIDE World Cup Winners Since 2005

Since 2021, when the field was expanded, the top-50 seeds get to sit out round one, while 78 players are eliminated to reach a standard 128-player knockout. 

There are two changes this year. One is that the event isn’t being held alongside the Women’s World Cup as it was in 2021 and 2023, since Divya won that event in Batumi, Georgia in July this year.

The other is to the time control. The two classical games in each match are the same as before, but the tiebreaks have been accelerated. Instead of two rapid games with 25 minutes for all moves plus a 10-second increment, those games will now be 15+10. Then, if needed, there are two 10+10 games, two 5+3, two 3+2, and then one more change—in 2023 extra 3+2 games would be played until one player won.

This year there’s a single bidding armageddon game, where White gets four minutes, but players bid the lowest time they’ll accept to play Black and only need a draw. Both players get two seconds increment per move from move one, an unusual time control for armageddon. The two-second increment likely means we won’t get the armageddon madness we got in IM Olga Badelka vs. IM Ana Matnadze in 2021.

What’s At Stake In The 2025 FIDE World Cup?

More importantly for the top players, however, are the three spots available in the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament that will decide the next world championship challenger for Gukesh. That means that the third-place match could potentially be more important than the final, though that depends on whether one of the players already qualified, GMs Anish Giri and Matthias Bluebaum, or Gukesh himself, reaches the final-four. The other player qualified for the Candidates, GM Fabiano Caruana, has chosen to rest in November instead.

Who’s Missing From The 2025 FIDE World Cup?

The previous two champions will be missing, with GM Magnus Carlsen getting to spend time with his new-born child. Carlsen’s victory in 2023 filled a rare gap in his resume, but the Norwegian has not been interested in the world championship cycle itself since choosing not to defend his title in 2023. 

More notable is that 2021 World Cup winner GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda won’t take part, with the Polish number-one having revealed that he suffered a crisis after the last event:

I had a mental crisis after winning the World Cup. It was a little overwhelming. Of course it was my greatest achievement. I’m very proud of it… but from the point of view of my future career, it was a big step backward, in the sense that the pressure was very big, the media frenzy, and so on, and so on, and then my health started to fall apart, first mentally, and then physically, and it wasn’t too nice. 

Another victim of success is former World Champion Ding Liren, who finished runner-up in the 2017 and 2019 World Cups but this year looks to have decided not to battle to regain the world championship title.

GM Alireza Firouzja also looks out of the running, after missing out on Candidates qualification via the FIDE Grand Swiss by the finest of tiebreak margins. The Iranian-born French star also skipped the 2023 event, explaining back then: “I didn’t see myself playing one month every day chess. It was just too much for me to compete. For me going to one place and staying there for one month to play, it’s a bit weird.”

Let’s now get to the players who are competing.

2025 World Cup Pairings Announced

The 206 players have been seeded according to rating with the one exception of Gukesh (2752), who as world champion is seeded number-one despite Arjun (2773), Praggnanandhaa (2771), Giri (2759), GM Wesley So (2756), GM Vincent Keymer (2755), and GM Wei Yi (2754) currently being higher-rated.

The lowest seed in the event is 1972-rated Libyan CM Nagi Abugenda, who qualified based on Libya’s placing in the 2024 FIDE Chess Olympiad. In round one he has a mountain to climb against the highest-rated 14-year-old of all time, GM Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, who as 51st seed was the first player to miss out on a bye through to round two.

The youngest player in the event is a wild card, Oro. The Argentinian prodigy, who will turn 12 two weeks before the start, is fresh from scoring his first grandmaster norm but faces a tough challenge against 2578-rated 37-year-old Croatian GM Ante Brkic. If Oro does win, however, he gets to play Vidit in round two, while if he wins four matches he’ll have taken a short cut to become the youngest grandmaster in history, since reaching the Last 16 of the World Cup is one way to gain the title. 

The second-youngest player is 2012-born Li Yiheng from Hong Kong, who will take on GM Jeffery Xiong, while in total there are over 30 teenagers. Meanwhile the oldest player, by some margin, is 65-year-old Georgian-born GM Igor Efimov, who qualified by winning the 2024 Small Nations Open Championship. His opponent in round one is 49 years younger, 16-year-old Turkish prodigy GM Ediz Gurel. 

Next oldest is 56-year-old Ukrainian chess legend GM Vasyl Ivanchuk, who will face a round-two matchup with 46th seed GM Sam Shankland if he overcomes Bangladeshi IM Mohammad Fahad Rahman in round one.

The only woman in the field is the Women’s World Cup holder Divya, who accepted a wild-card invitation after Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun and women’s number-one Hou Yifan declined to take part. She faces a tough challenge in round one against 27-year-old 2583-rated Greek GM Stamatis Kourkoulos Arditis, but she knows she has a chance, since she beat the same opponent earlier this year in the final round of the Prague Challengers.

If she does win, she’ll take on her fellow countryman GM Nihal Sarin in round two.

Big knockouts are famous for upsets, but if we assume the top seeds win their matches we can already plot out the path to the title. For instance, here’s who Gukesh would have to beat if all the top seeds triumph.

Gukesh’s Potential Path To 2025 World Cup Victory

And here are the potential opponents for the top-10 seeds.

Potential Path To 2025 World Cup Victory For Top-10 Seeds

Check out the full pairings here.

Who do you think will win the 2025 Goa FIDE World Cup?

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