The Road To The Esports World Cup

Now that the Candidates Tournament is behind us, it's time to turn our attention to the next biggest chess event of the year: the Esports World Cup (EWC).

You might've thought I was going to say the World Championship, in which the historic Candidates winner GM Javokhir Sindarov will face off against reigning champ GM Gukesh Dommaraju in a match that marks the full-on arrival of the next generation of chess, but we'll have to wait until the end of the year for that. In the meantime, we get to enjoy another vision of the future of the game, albeit from another perspective and with one other big difference. That's right: this future still includes GM Magnus Carlsen.

• How We Got Here
• Who Has Already Qualified?
• What Comes Next?

How We Got Here

Last year marked the first time that chess was featured in the Esports World Cup, and it turned out to be a rousing success, with Carlsen reinforcing his dominance of rapid and blitz play by beating GM Alireza Firouzja in the finals. With games played at 10+0 time control—the most popular time control on Chess.com—the Esports World Cup offers a totally different experience than the classical chess of the world championship cycle, one that is far more similar to the version that most fans participate in themselves.

Beyond that, this marks one aspect of the game where Sindarov and Gukesh's generation hasn't yet dethroned the previous one. While we'll never know how long Magnus would have remained world champion, it is undeniable that he has dominated faster time controls ever since opting out of the classical title cycle.

But could 2026 be the time when that finally changes... or will Magnus continue to exist in a category of his own?

This year, the EWC qualification cycle was extended to include a number of events, including the Speed Chess Championship (SCC), the recently concluded Chess.com Open (CCO), and the Champions Chess Tour (CCT) leaderboard, which aggregates points from those events as well as Titled Tuesdays. The result has been a kind of regular season for faster chess, raising the stakes and giving fans a narrative to follow along with every week.

At the same time, the EWC has offered additional paths toward making a living through chess, and it isn't just the prize money from the various events. Players have been signing on with Esports teams, offering them the type of reliable income that can be hard to come by as a chess player.

We're almost at the end of the road for qualification, and it's worth taking stock of where we stand now and what's left to be decided before the EWC takes place in August, with $1.5 million on the line.

Who Has Already Qualified?

Any conversation about the EWC has to start with Carlsen, who has dominated the qualification process to a hilarious degree—even though he was already qualified.

[Carlsen] has dominated the qualification process to a hilarious degree—even though he was already qualified.

Carlsen earned a spot in the 2026 EWC by virtue of winning in 2025. But that hasn't stopped him from winning both qualifying events, including a dramatic come-from-behind victory over GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda in the Chess.com Open, which was also played at the 10+0 time control. (The Speed Chess Championship featured its usual blitz and bullet with increment.) His win at the Speed Chess Championship marked his fifth time winning that tournament; Hikaru Nakamura, also a five-time winner, is the only other player to have won it since 2016.

Fortunately for the rest of the chess world, both events offered qualifying spots to the top three finishers. Rather than Sindarov or Gukesh, Firouzja has solidly established himself as the biggest challenger to Magnus' dominance from the next generation. At the SCC, Firouzja made a remarkable come-from-behind victory in the semifinals against Hikaru that required him to win two do-or-die games in the last five minutes, and he gave Magnus a good challenge in the finals. Add this to his appearance in last year's EWC finals, and it's hard not to see Firouzja as one of the favorites going into this year's tournament.

The third qualifier from the Speed Chess Championship was 19-year-old GM Denis Lazavik, who is another ascendant speed-chess competitor. Lazavik beat Hikaru in a tightly contested third-place match, earning himself a spot in the EWC for the first time. And in true Magnus fashion, he then went on to earn one of the qualifying spots from the Chess.com Open as well when he beat GM Nihal Sarin to place third. That left one last qualifier from the two events: Duda, who earned his spot by winning the Loser's Bracket and making it to the finals against Carlsen.

So of the six spots offered by the Speed Chess Championship and Chess.com Open, four of them were earned by Magnus and Lazavik, with the other two going to Firouzja and Duda.

What Comes Next?

Here's where we stand going into the last legs of qualification. The Titled Tuesday Spring Split ends May 26, meaning that two more Titled Tuesdays remain to determine who qualifies. The nine players currently in pole position to qualify through the Champions Chess Tour are Hikaru, Nihal, and GMs Ian Nepomniachtchi, Sina Movahed, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Hans Niemann, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Fabiano Caruana, and Wesley So—all of whom played in the last EWC except for the 15-year-old phenom Mohaved and the established veteran So. All of them except So have their spot locked in; you can find the full standings here.

Currently on the outside looking in are two super GMs, Arjun Erigaisi and Vincent Keymer, both top 10 players by classical rating. (Arjun played in EWC 2025, while Keymer did not.) They each stand at 65 points, putting them 16 behind So. Two firsts or a first and a second would give either player enough points to leapfrog So, assuming that So doesn't place in the top 10 in either tournament. That makes a change in the leaderboard highly unlikely, but not impossible!

Even if they don't pull off that Hail Mary, though, that's not the end of the story for Arjun, Keymer, or any of the other hopefuls. Eight more spots remain up for grabs, and five of these will be decided this weekend. Four will come from DreamHack Atlanta, and then one more will be filled by the winner of India Rising. Both tournaments will feature the same 10+0 time control as the EWC, and both are open tournaments, meaning that plenty of hopefuls can still dream of Esports glory. Finally, in July, there's the aptly named Last Chance Qualifier in Riyadh, another open with a 10+0 format.

It's hard not to wonder if other super GMs who played in last year's EWC—like Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, Levon Aronian, Anish Giri, and Wei Yi—might find their way in through one of these tournaments. Most notable of all, the 2025 Last Chance qualifiers included a name whose stock has risen quite a bit in the year since: Javokhir Sindarov. After his dominant Candidates showing, we'd all love to see Sindarov play a part in the EWC as well, and his possible participation represents one of the biggest remaining questions to be answered as the qualification process winds down.

Regardless of who locks up these final slots, though, the 2026 Esports World Cup is already looking like an excellent field, all of whom will be tasked with the same seemingly impossible mission: beat Magnus.

The 2026 Esports World Cup is already looking like an excellent field, all of whom will be tasked with the same seemingly impossible mission: beat Magnus.