Greetings to all chess fans! The first round of the 2026 Fide Candidates tournament was played last night. It's the elite chess event that determines who will challenge the reigning World Chess Champion Gukesh Dommaraju later in 2026. Given Gukesh's recent performances, the winner of this tournament has a big chance of taking the title from him. The participants are:
Fabiano Caruana — World number three and my favorite to win the Candidates. He challenged Magnus Carlsen in 2018 for the title showing impressive preparation. They drew all classical games and he lost on tie breaks.
Hikaru Nakamura — World number two and favorite by many of his fans online. I don't rate him that high though given that he played mediocre opposition to qualify for the minimum number of games. He also didn't do well in his training match against Awonder Liang.
Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa — one of the rising, young Indian stars. I like his attacking, tactical style.
Anish Giri — one of the old guards and contemporary of Magnus Carlsen. His solid play is not appreciated by many.
Matthias Blübaum — German number two and clearly the underdog of this tournament.
Javokhir Sindarov — up and coming young Uzbek star. He's a dark horse in this tournament and may pull off a surprise.
Wei Yi — World number eight from China. He qualified by being runner up in the 2025 Fide World Cup.
Andrey Esipenko — another underdog in this tournament but may pull an upset over favorites.
Caruana - Nakamura
The favorites faced each other in round one. Caruana played an off beat English opening which is clearly prep. Caruana offered a pawn on d4 which Nakamura declined to avoid White's opening preparation and proceeded instead with Nf5.
The game evolved to an opposite colored bishop endgame where White had the advantage owing to his more active pieces. Black's dark squared Bishop was hampered by his own pawns while White's light square Bishop had a great position on d5.
Caruana converted the position to a win taking a one point score.
Pragg - Giri
Pragg came with guns blazing answering Giri's Sicilian Defense with f4.
He soon advanced his f pawn and opened up Black's King side forcing Giri to castle on the Queen side. In the position below, Black had two isolated pawns on f5 and h7 plus a backward pawn on d6.
Pragg exchanged pieces for a favorable endgame to target the weak pawns and converted to a win.
Sindarov - Esipenko
I felt Esipenko had the advantage in the game owing to his passed pawns on the Queen side.
In mutual time trouble, Esipenko blundered with Qc6 which Sindarov took advantage of and got the win.
Bluebaum - Wei
This game ended in rather quick (under forty moves) draw.
The games can be replayed in lichess.org site.
https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-candidates-2026-open/round-1/uLCZwqAK/MXjq3pPw
Round 2 can be seen live
https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-candidates-2026-open/round-2/FRTlzP2X#boards
or on youtube:
