The 46th World Chess Olympiad will open with a ceremony in Samarkand this evening, bringing together 398 teams, 1,974 players and 240 grandmasters, the website infohub.kz reports.
Kazakhstan's national teams will also compete. The women's team enters the tournament as the runner-up from the previous Olympiad, held in Budapest in 2024.
Defending champions India, who have brought their strongest lineup to Uzbekistan, are considered the favorites in the women's event. The main contenders, in order of starting rank, are Georgia, China, Kazakhstan and the United States. Russia's women's and men's teams were barred from competing in Samarkand.
Kazakhstan's top board will be occupied by 22-year-old grandmaster Bibisara Assaubayeva, who is enjoying an outstanding season. The leader of Kazakhstan's women's chess won the prestigious Norway Chess tournament and finished third at the Cairns Cup. She also took second place in the Women's Candidates Tournament for the world chess crown.
The top board for Kazakhstan's men's team, seeded 34th out of 208 teams, will be 26-year-old grandmaster Denis Makhnev.
In the open (men's) tournament, the United States received the top seed. Second is 2024 champion India, led by the current king of chess, Gukesh Dommaraju, and third is Uzbekistan, headed by Javokhir Sindarov — a contender for the chess crown and, incidentally, the boyfriend of Kazakhstan's Assaubayeva. The world championship match between Dommaraju and Sindarov will be held in Geneva from November 22 to December 13.
The World Chess Olympiad will be played under the Swiss system over 11 rounds. Each team consists of 4 players and 1 reserve. The time control is classical: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves plus 30 minutes, with a 30-second increment after every move starting from the first.
A team earns two match points for a win and one for a draw. Ties are broken by additional criteria: the Berger coefficient (the number of points scored by a team's opponents) and the sum of the team members' individual points.
The winners of the men's tournament receive the Lord Frederick Gustavus Hamilton-Russell Cup, while the women's champions receive the Vera Menchik Cup. The country with the lowest combined placement of both its teams is awarded the Nona Gaprindashvili Cup.
During the 2026 World Chess Olympiad, a FIDE Congress will be held, and its general assembly will elect a new president of the International Chess Federation on September 26. There are three candidates: Germany's Jan-Henrik Buettner, Russia's Vadim Rosenstein and Kazakhstan's Timur Turlov.