The FIDE World Team Rapid & Blitz Championships are a new annual event combining a federation-team rapid championship with a parallel team blitz, hosted in 2026 in Hong Kong as the inaugural edition. The event runs at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 16 through 22 June, with a $300,000 prize fund across both formats.
Why It’s New
FIDE has run a World Team Championship in the classical format since 1985, but a team-format rapid event at world-championship level has not existed before. The 2026 Hong Kong edition is FIDE’s attempt to give the rapid format the same multi-day, federation-team structure that classical team chess has had for forty years — and to extend the commercial growth of rapid chess beyond the individual-format Carlsen-era Grand Tour events that have dominated the format since 2015.
Format
Round-robin among qualifying national teams, four boards per team. The rapid event uses a 15-minute base plus 10-second increment; the blitz event uses a 3-minute base plus 2-second increment. Both formats are run as parallel events with separate standings, separate prize funds, and separate medal awards. A separate amateur cup runs alongside for non-elite club teams, with its own qualification path and a smaller prize structure.
Qualification
Forty federations qualified for the inaugural edition through continental zonals run in late 2025. Continental allocations follow FIDE’s standard distribution: Europe and Asia receive the largest share, with smaller allocations for the Americas, Africa, and Oceania. Wild-card spots were granted to the host federation (Hong Kong) and to FIDE’s selected commercial partners.
Place in the FIDE Calendar
The June scheduling deliberately positions the event in the gap between the Norway Chess super-tournament and the European Individual cycle — a quiet stretch for elite individual events but a strong one for federation-team mobilisation. Long-term, the intention is to alternate the event between Asian and European host federations, with Singapore reportedly in the running for the 2027 edition.