#Candidates

The eight-player double round-robin that decided Gukesh Dommaraju's challenger — won, in record fashion, by Uzbekistan's Javokhir Sindarov on the Mediterranean coast of Cyprus.

The Uzbek grandmaster who won the 2025 World Cup and the 2026 Candidates in a single season — becoming, at twenty, the challenger for the World Chess Championship.

The grandmaster from Minsk who reached the World Championship match at forty-three — a Soviet-trained classicist whose career bridged the era of Karpov to that of Carlsen.

The youngest grandmaster in history at twelve, the World Championship challenger at twenty-six, and one of the era's hardest players to beat with the black pieces.

Indian grandmaster, 2024 Candidates qualifier — the bridge between the Anand era and the Gukesh generation, both as competitor and team captain at the 2024 Olympiad.

Germany's first plausible world-championship contender since Emanuel Lasker — a calm positional grandmaster whose rise has paced the post-Carlsen era exactly.

The youngest player to break 2800, the Iranian-born grandmaster who took French citizenship in 2021 and entered the world championship picture before…

America's strongest player — twice runner-up at the World Championship, and the most deeply prepared opening theoretician of the engine era.

Five-time US champion and the most prolific online chess broadcaster ever — the player who showed that streaming and grandmaster chess could coexist.

Russia's strongest current player — twice the world championship challenger, both times unsuccessful, both times after dominating Candidates Tournaments.

The Chennai-born prodigy who became the youngest international master in history, then a grandmaster at twelve, then a Candidates contender in his teens.

The Soviet defector who twice challenged Karpov for the world title — and the longest-active world-class player in the modern era.