Speed Chess Championship Finals Leading Another Great Month At Chess.com

GMs Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja, and Denis Lazavik made the semifinals of the Speed Chess Championship, and the time has come. Whether you're reading this before or after the big February 6-8 weekend festivities, you can see all the details on Chess.com/Events. But this month also features a big documentary, new Chessable courses, a new way to teach the basics of chess, and much more.

Here's everything this update covers: 

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

Events

• Tickets are sold out for the Speed Chess Championship Finals in London on February 7-8, but you can still tune in at Chess.com/events, YouTube, and Twitch. Catch all the action between Carlsen, Nakamura, Firouzja, and Lazavik!
• The Winter Split of the 2025-26 Titled Tuesday season concludes this month. Carlsen currently leads the standings. Players below him are fighting for positioning that could make or break their attempt to reach the Chess.com Global Championship. Next month, the spring split begins, which will continue the fight for 2026 Esports World Cup spots, as well as determine the players in the 2026 Women's Speed Chess Championship.
• The Spring 2026 season of the Collegiate Chess League begins February 14. Will defending champion St. Louis University repeat, or is it time for a new victor?
• GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov won Tata Steel Chess on February 1. Abdusattorov scored 9/13 in the Masters, and finished half a point ahead of second and 1.5 points ahead of third, while GM Andy Woodward won the Challengers.
• GM Ray Robson won his sixth Puzzles Championship in the first Community Championship of the year on January 16. The next one, the 3-Check Championship, happens February 19-20.

Product & Engineering

Make sure you catch all three of our product and engineering updates this month!

• New to chess, or want to introduce someone you know to the game? We have a brand-new lesson for you: Learn To Play Chess. Take just five minutes to learn all the moves and how to checkmate.
• Our February bots, the "Frozen Five", are just in time for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

• You can now customize your sidebar! Set it up just how you'd like to quickly find your favorite parts of Chess.com in a hover and a click.

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

Community

• Don't miss Queen of Chess, a brand-new documentary about GM Judit Polgar from renowned director Rory Kennedy, streaming on Netflix from February 6. Make sure you catch it! It's also not to late to sign up for Judit vs. the World on Chess.com! 

• War is Over!, the Oscar-winning, chess-themed animated short film released in December, will be getting a special bot later this month. Stay tuned!
• It's not to early to put the MIT Sloan Conference on your calendar for March 3-6. Stay tuned for updates on the Chess.com panel!
• The Improvement Challenge is back for 2026! To make the most of the Chess Improvement Challenge, join the club today and check out the club forum, too! Every month, we will recognize the top improvers and share improvement stories.

Content

• Carlsen and Nakamura played a blindfold game against each other at an event in Barcelona with Rozman commentating, and we captured it on video:

• FM Mike Klein profiled one of Chess.com's newest directors, GM Vinay Bhat. Come and get to know our new AI/Machine Learning Engineering Director!
• And in case you missed them, you can recap how 2025 went in chess with our Year In Review and our annual coverage of the top prizewinners. 

Chessable & Courses

Two top-tier grandmaster commentators are among those bringing brand new Courses this month.

• GM Peter Svidler, one of the great players and commentators, presents "The Complete Manual of Positional Chess – Volume 1", a brand-new premium course based on the work of GMs Konstantin Sakaev and Konstantin Landa.
• GM Simon Williams delivers the latest Lifetime Repertoire, on the Stonewall Dutch, in "Lifetime Repertoires: Stonewall Dutch."

ChessKid

• Who are the top prodigies to watch in 2026? You can read ChessKid's top five list here! One of them, Andy Woodward, has already made noise by winning the Tata Steel Challangers tournament—congrats Andy!

Fair Play

Fair Play Stats for January 2026

• 1,268,528 reports created
• 152,049 Fair Play closures (including 11 titled players: 4 IM, 2 FM, 3 CM, 1 NM, 1 WGM)
• 2,300+ mute actions
• 2,000+ accounts muted
• 288,900+ abuse closures
• 45,539,584 rating points refunded

Support

Support Stats for January 2026

• Median Time to First Human Response: 27 hours
• Users Helped: 907,114
• Users Helped By Humans: 149,061
• Average Quality by Member Rating: 93.3%
• Total Ratings: 4,569

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.