The third edition of the Chennai Grand Masters tournament begins on Wednesday evening, with some of the world’s top players looking to get into the groove ahead of what can be considered as the serious beginning of the 2026 World Championship Cycle.
Over the next three months, five Candidates spots will be decided at the FIDE Grand Swiss tournament and the FIDE World Cup. So, whether it is to get back into the groove of playing Classical chess after a jam-packed year or looking to find some form and confidence in terms of results, there is plenty of incentive available to the players at this tournament.
When is it happening?
The tournament begins on August 6 and will carry on until August 15. There will be only one rest day in between – on August 11 – with the players playing nine rounds in ten days.
What is the format?
Classical.
Each player will start with 90 minutes on their clocks, with a 30 second increment kicking in per move once they reach move 40. If players are tied on points at the end of nine rounds, tie-breaks will be played in the blitz format, with three-minute games having two-second increments per move.
Who is playing?
The tournament is split into two categories — Masters and Challengers.
The Masters field is led by world no.6 Arjun Erigaisi, who might be considered by some as the favourite to win the tournament this time. However, it’s fairly certain that Erigaisi won’t have it all his way. Anish Giri, Vincent Keymer, Vidit Gujrathi and Nihal Sarin are all part of a strong field which will give the players a considerable test before the Grand Swiss tournament next month.
Dutchman Jorden van Foreest, USA’s Awonder Liang and Ray Robson, and Indians V Pranav and Karthikeyan Murali round off the Masters field.
The Challengers tournament is an all-Indian affair, with two women – Harika Dronavalli and Vaishali Rameshbabu – a part of the field. Leon Luke Mendonca, B Adhiban, P Iniyan, Abhimanyu Puranik, Diptayan Ghosh, Aryan Chopra, M Pranesh, and Harshavardhan GB are the rest of the players in the field.
Where’s the World Champion?
Surely, Gukesh Dommaraju wouldn’t miss a tournament being played in his hometown? Well, the world champion’s calendar has taken him halfway around the world. With not much to play for in this World Championship cycle (because he, of course, doesn’t need to play in the Candidates tournament), Gukesh will be at the Grand Chess Tour events in the, starting on August 9 with the St. Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament, before the Sinquefield Cup, which begins on August 18.
As it stands, R Praggnanandhaa is slated to play the Sinquefield Cup as well, which explains his absence from this tournament which would only end two days prior to the start of the Sinquefield Cup.
What is this significance of this tournament?
The domino effect that culminated in Gukesh becoming world champion began with him winning the inaugural Chennai Grand Masters in 2023. It gave him the FIDE circuit points required to get into the Candidates tournament, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Apart from Circuit points, which the likes of Arjun, Keymer and Giri will be chasing, there’s also the huge incentive of building form and momentum ahead of the two massive tournaments – the Grand Swiss in September and the World Cup in November.
There have been so many different formats of Chess played in what has been a packed 2025 so far, that no one has really been able to build their rhythm in playing classical chess. As the World Championship cycle heads into its home stretch, India’s biggest chess tournament assumes a huge amount of significance for all the top players playing in the Masters section.
