Big Tournaments In A Big Month At Chess.com

Chess fans recently enjoyed some of the biggest classical tournaments and biggest online blitz tournaments that exist. From the Candidates Tournament to the Chess.com Open to PogChamps 6 7, there was no shortage of chess action in the past month. Read about all of them and more, from pirates to new opening courses, in our community update for May 2026.

Here's everything this update covers: 

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

Events

• GM Javokhir Sindarov wrapped up a dominant Candidates run, while GM Vaishali Rameshbabu won on the last day to take the Women's Candidates. Their world championship matches against GMs Gukesh Dommaraju and Ju Wenjun take place later this year.
• GM Magnus Carlsen won the Chess.com Open, but almost as importantly, runner-up GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda qualified for the Esports World Cup this summer. Carlsen, as well as GMs Alireza Firouzja and Denis Lazavik, had already qualified for the EWC.
• The remaining EWC spots come down to the Titled Tuesday Spring Split, currently led by GM Sina Movahed with four weeks remaining. The overall leader in the Champions Chess Tour Standings among players not yet EWC-qualified is GM Hikaru Nakamura.
• In the Freestyle Friday Championship, GM Pranav Venkatesh recently took the lead from GM Oleksandr Bortnyk as spots in the 2027 Freestyle World Championship are on the line.
• The University of Texas-Dallas won the Spring 2026 season of the Collegiate Chess League, knocking off defending champion St. Louis University in the semifinals and SRM Institute of Science and Technology in the finals.
• The 4-Player Chess specialist Luis Ignacio won his second straight Chess.com 4-Player Chess Championship on April 17 in the Chess.com Community Championships.

Product & Engineering

• Yarr, what say ye about pirate-themed May bots?
• And we continue to add new AI coaches all the time, most recently GM Judit Polgar.

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

Community

• PogChamps made its triumphant return with PogChamps 6 7, won by Jynxzi under the tutelage of GothamChess, IM Levy Rozman. Watch the best moments here:

Content

• Our video content team was hard at work this past month. Watch as grandmasters try to name other grandmasters—one per alphabet letter!—and come back to solve more puzzles... blindfolded.

• We also took the best moments from Sindarov and Vaishali's clinching games in the Candidates Tournaments and compiled them for you. 

Chessable & Courses

• Ready for some more lifetime opening repertoires? GMs Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Diptayan Ghosh offer their five-star Caro-Kann repertoire, and FM Kamil Plichta explains how to face down the Sicilian with White.

ChessKid

• The ChessKid experience is getting better and better. Read up on new updates to the app as well as explore brand-new chessboard and piece themes, and go check them out!
• The latest edition of Kids vs. Stars was another big chess competition in April. WFM Alexandra Botez won 2.5-1.5 against four budding stars aged nine to 13: WCM Abigail Zhou, WCM Larissa Mayorga, Kenneth Alba, and WFM Ashley Qian. Congrats to Ashley for winning her game and Kenneth for holding a draw!

Fair Play

Fair Play Stats for April 2026

• 1,143,850 reports created
• 146,200 Fair Play closures (including 23 titled players: 3 NM, 7 CM, 3 IM, 9 FM, 1 WFM)
• 2,000+ mute actions
• 1,800+ accounts muted
• 235,800+ abuse closures
• 46,336,023 rating points refunded

Support

Support Stats for April 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.