The Champions Chess Tour is Chess.com’s flagship annual online chess competition — a multi-leg series of rapid and blitz tournaments that runs across the calendar year and concludes with a Tour Finals. The 2026 edition is currently ongoing, with multiple legs already completed and several more scheduled through December.
The format has evolved since the tour’s founding in 2020 (originally as the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour, organised by Play Magnus Group). Chess.com acquired Play Magnus Group in 2023 and rebranded the series. The current format consists of 6–8 individual events per year, each running over 4–5 days with a 32-player or 16-player knockout structure. Time controls vary between events (rapid for some, blitz for others, mixed for the Finals).
The total prize fund across the 2026 calendar exceeds $2 million. Individual event prizes typically run $150,000–$400,000 per event, with the Tour Finals at the high end.
Historical winners across tour editions include Magnus Carlsen (multiple individual events and overall tour titles), Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So (multiple individual events), Levon Aronian, Anish Giri, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Carlsen’s post-2022 dominance of the online format is one of the most striking single-player accomplishments in chess history.
For the live schedule, current standings, and broadcast links to all ongoing events, see the Chess.com tour page in the right column.