The 2026 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship is taking place this weekend in Weissenhaus, Germany, with GM Magnus Carlsen topping an eight-player field featuring GMs Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Vincent Keymer, Arjun Erigaisi, Javokhir Sindarov, Hans Niemann, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. We take a look at seven talking points ahead of the new tournament.
- Didn’t We Just Crown Magnus Carlsen Freestyle Chess Champion?
- Is This Really The 1st Official FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship?
- What’s At Stake?
- When, Where, And How To Watch?
- Who’s Playing… And Where Is Hikaru?
- What’s The Format?
- Who’s Going To Win The FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship?
1. Didn’t We Just Crown Magnus Carlsen Freestyle Chess Champion?
Yes! Magnus Carlsen won the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour with two days to spare just two months ago in South Africa. He ended the series of five events in Weissenhaus, Paris, Karlsruhe, Las Vegas, and South Africa $805,000 better off, after clinching the title by 37 points ahead of Aronian.
2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Final Standings: Top 8
That wasn’t, however, a world championship, after Freestyle Chess backed down from an attempt to crown a world champion after an acrimonious battle with the International Chess Federation (FIDE) over the rights to the title. In the end an agreement was reached to hold a combined “first official FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship” this month.
2. Is This Really The 1st Official FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship?
Yes and no. It’s the first time a championship with this precise branding has been held by the Freestyle Chess and FIDE organisations, but FIDE did previously host official Chess960 (Fischer Random) World Championships in 2019 (won by GM Wesley So), and 2022 (won by GM Hikaru Nakamura).
Carlsen and Nakamura also played an “unofficial” world championship match in 2018 (Carlsen won), while an event in Mainz, Germany from 2001 to 2009 saw GMs Peter Leko, Peter Svidler, Aronian, and Nakamura all crowned world champion.
3. What’s At Stake?
Compared to the Freestyle Chess tour the prize fund has dropped, with half as much money at stake for this event compared to the Weissenhaus Grand Slam in 2025. Nevertheless, $300,000 in total and a $100,000 top prize isn’t too shabby for three days of work…
…while there’s also, of course, the world championship title.
That’s not all, as the top-three finishers will already qualify for the 2027 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship. Where will the five remaining players come from?
One will be the winner of the 2026 Grenke Freestyle Chess Open this Easter (April 2-5) which, despite overlapping with the Candidates Tournament, is already set to be perhaps the strongest open of the year based on the registered players.
| FED | Name | Rating | Freestyle Rating |
| Magnus Carlsen | 2840 | 2887 | |
| Nodirbek Abdusattorov | 2751 | 2697 | |
| Vincent Keymer | 2776 | 2780 | |
| Levon Aronian | 2729 | 2786 | |
| Ian Nepomniachtchi | 2726 | 2771 | |
| Jan-Krzysztof Duda | 2731 | – | |
| Parham Maghsoodloo | 2708 | 2687 | |
| Aravindh Chithambaram | 2700 | 2707 | |
| Leinier Dominguez | 2738 | 2731 | |
| Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 2734 | 2700 | |
| Hans Niemann | 2725 | 2722 | |
| Vladimir Fedoseev | 2704 | 2716 | |
| Awonder Liang | 2719 | 2680 | |
| Nihal Sarin | 2716 | – | |
| Amin Tabatabaei | 2700 | 2661 |
Then one player will qualify from the leaderboard of Freestyle Friday, Chess.com’s weekly event open to all titled players, while the other three players qualify from events that are yet to be confirmed.
4. When, Where, And How To Watch?
It’s a whirlwind three-day event starting this Friday, February 13, at 9 a.m. ET / 15:00 CET / 7:30 p.m. IST and ending Sunday, with the venue the same place the Freestyle Chess adventure began with the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge back in 2024. That’s the Weissenhaus Private Nature Luxury Resort on the Baltic coast north-east of Hamburg, Germany.
You’ll be able to watch all the action on the Chess24 YouTube and Twitch channels, with the woman of the moment, GM Judit Polgar, currently in Germany as part of the commentary team. You can also follow all the games with analysis on our FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship events page.
5. Who’s Playing… And Where Is Hikaru?
The formidable lineup features eight players, with six qualifying based on where they finished in the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour: Carlsen, Aronian, Caruana, Keymer, Arjun, and Sindarov. Freestyle Chess nominated Niemann as a wild card, while the final place went to Abdusattorov after he triumphed in the gruelling online play-in.
Eyebrows were raised by the absence of Nakamura, the reigning Chess960 World Champion and the player who finished seventh in the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour despite missing the final event. The mystery was solved when Nakamura, who had previously said he’d be coming to Weissenhaus for the first leg of the 2026 Tour, explained he was unhappy with the changes and what he called the “most rushed arrangement for a World Championship title in history.” He told Chess.com:
I truly enjoyed the first event in Weissenhaus in 2025, and it’s a shame that the classical length format wasn’t continued. Furthermore, this all feels like a hastily arranged tournament with less than 1/3rd the prize fund it originally had, and now it’s attached to FIDE, which isn’t a positive development in my opinion.
He said he’s decided to put his focus on the Candidates Tournament, which will also feature Caruana and Sindarov, who do play in Weissenhaus.
6. What’s The Format?
The event kicks off on Friday with an eight-player single round-robin i.e. each player faces each other player once. The time control is 10 minutes for all moves, with a five-second increment each move from move one, while of course all games are played in Chess960, with the pieces arranged semi-randomly on the back rank.
Only the top four continue to play for the title in a knockout, where each match is best-of-four-games, and played at a 25+10 time control. The Semifinals are on Saturday and the Final on Sunday, with the players who finished in the bottom half of the round-robin competing for places 5-8.
There’s also a bonus event, with GMs Alexandra Kosteniuk and Bibisara Assaubayeva playing an exhibition match ahead of a Women’s Freestyle Chess World Championship planned for later this year.
Alexandra Kosteniuk vs. Bibisara Assaubayeva in Weissenhaus. ⚔️
A Freestyle Chess exhibition match played during the @FIDE_chess Freestyle Chess World Championship, bringing two exceptional players together in the Freestyle format.
Four games at the highest level.
And a preview… pic.twitter.com/Dd3hyhxoKR
— Freestyle Chess (@chess_freestyle) February 9, 2026
7. Who’s Going To Win The FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship?
Of course Carlsen is, as always, the man to beat, but as we’ve seen, it’s hard to make predictions for any one-off Freestyle Chess event. For instance, the round-robin is a major potential banana skin, with the world number-one failing to qualify for the top bracket in Las Vegas and condemned to play for only third place (which he duly achieved!).
It’s possible to make a case for all of the players in Weissenhaus winning the title. Aronian won in Vegas and South Africa to finish second overall in the Tour, Niemann finished runner-up in Vegas, while Keymer won in Weissenhaus in 2025 and seems to be warming up nicely this time around.
Prep for Weissenhaus😃#FreestyleChess pic.twitter.com/QxDlEbrSYi
— Vincent Keymer (@VincentKeymer04) February 6, 2026
Caruana twice finished on the podium in 2025 and was in Germany a week in advance to play in the Bundesliga, where he scored 1.5/2 in his first chess action of 2026.
Arjun may wish he’d also skipped Wijk aan Zee, but the Indian star is always dangerous and began the recovery from Tata Steel Chess with a win over GM Ivan Saric in the Bundesliga, his first win in 14 games.
That leaves two men of the moment, the Uzbek stars Abdusattorov and Sindarov. They topped the Tata Steel Masters standings and have both shown their class in Freestyle Chess. Abdusattorov confirmed that earlier this year when he qualified for the world championship, while Sindarov was a revelation in 2025 as a late replacement, beating Carlsen on the way to topping the table of the round-robin in Weissenhaus in 2025 and proving it was no fluke by doing the same in the last event of the year in South Africa.
Add to that Sindarov winning Titled Tuesday on a stopover in Dubai on the way to Germany, and there’s every reason to expect him to hit the ground running!
Who do you think will win the World Championship title? Let us know in the comments below.
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