From Chess.com Open To Opening Repertoires, Everything's Open

Things are opening up on Chess.com, where the Chess.com Open Playoffs are coming up, and a brand new way to study openings on Chessable also available. And with the Candidates Tournament ongoing in addition to the Chess.com Open, there's no shortage of big chess games happening in April. March was a big month as well, with the latest State of Chess.com broadcast, new developments on the Chess.com app, and much more.

Here's everything this update covers: 

• Events
• Product & Engineering
• Community
• Content
• Chessable
• ChessKid
• Fair Play
• Support

Events

• The complete field for the Chess.com Open (formerly Chess.com Global Championship) is now set for April 23-26, when a champion will be crowned, after thousands of players joined the fully-open Preliminaries, Titled Qualifiers, and Play-Ins.
• The all-important Candidates Tournament is underway. Will early leader GM Javokhir Sindarov become the next world championship challenger? Can GM Anna Muzychuk or GM Vaishali Rameshbabu win the women's tournament?
• Our ongoing weekly tournaments continue as GM Nihal Sarin leads the Titled Tuesday Spring Split, which is about halfway complete, while GM Oleksandr Bortnyk leads the Freestyle Friday Championship which runs through the end of the year.
• The Collegiate Chess League Spring 2026 season, with more than 2,000 players representing over 200 schools, will conclude April 25. See our playoff preview.
• Andrey Volgin won the 2026 Atomic Chess Championship on March 6. Some variants you don't need an official title to be the best at!
• In case you missed it, the ChessKid Youth Championships ended with the under-16 division won by GM Sina Movahed.

Product & Engineering

• Widgets are live on the Chess.com app! Start a game, continue a streak, and more directly from your phone's home screen.
• Ever wanted to join the circus? No need when you can just play our April bots.

If you are in tech and would like to join our team, we're hiring!

Community

• IM Danny Rensch once again hosted our State of Chess.com stream. For nearly four hours on March 24, Danny and Friends discussed all sorts of topics, from Queen of Chess to trust and safety. Read our State of Chess.com recap here or watch the whole stream below:

• Speaking of Queen of Chess, GM Judit Polgar checkmated the world team in just 27 moves in the recent Polgar vs. the World match. Better luck next time, World!

Content

• Sindarov was interviewed before the Candidates, where you can gain more insight into his career and ambitions.
• It was another active month on YouTube. New dads GMs Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura took a quiz on parenthood, while the players at the World Freestyle Championship had the slightly more difficult task of ranking the players by age. 

Chessable & Courses

• A huge new feature is now available on Chess.com Courses and Chessable: Opening Repertoires! Read here about Opening Repertoires and how this feature allows you to build your own custom course combining your favorite parts of multiple existing Chessable courses.

• And if you're looking for a new premium course, try out FM James Canty's presentation of WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili's Meanest Reti Opening—the Keti Reti!

ChessKid

• If you missed FMs Bodhana Sivanandan and Mike Klein playing a game on YouTube, catch up right here:

• And read here about how ChessKid is building a national chess culture nearly from scratch.

Fair Play

Fair Play Stats for March 2026

• 833,356 reports created
• 130,217 Fair Play closures (including 18 titled players: 5 CM, 3 FM, 3 IM, 2 WFM, 2 NM, 1 WGM, 1 WIM, 1 GM)
• 2,300+ mute actions
• 2,000+ accounts muted
• 241,400+ abuse closures
• 40,497,125 rating points refunded

Support

Support Stats for March 2026

• Median Time to First Human Response: 24 hours
• Users Helped: 1,072,954
• Users Helped By Humans: 145,215
• Average Quality by Member Rating: 93.9%
• Total Ratings: 4,410

Thank you for being part of the world's largest chess community. Let us know your thoughts and ideas in the comments below!

Missed any updates? Open the menu below for all past editions of the Community Update, or find last month's here.