FIDE Circuit Becomes 2-Year Qualification Cycle

FIDE Circuit Becomes 2-Year Qualification Cycle GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu won the 2025 FIDE Circuit and joined 2024 winner GM Fabiano Caruana in qualifying for the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament . The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has now announced that for 2026-7 two years will be combined, with a player's best 12 results counting for the final leaderboard. Other changes include a separate Open ranking only for events with 50+ players, and a lower bonus for the player who loses the world championship match. 2025 FIDE Circuit final standings. Image: FIDE. The FIDE Circuit , a ranking based on performances in individual tournaments, has run for the last three years and qualified GMs Gukesh Dommaraju (since first-place Caruana had already qualified), Caruana, and Praggnanandhaa to Candidates Tournaments. FIDE Circuit Top Finishers (Candidates qualifiers in capitals) Year 1st FED Score 2nd FED Score 3rd FED Score 2023 Caruana 118.61 GUKESH 87.36 Giri 84.31 2024 CARUANA 130.42 Arjun 124.4 Abdusattorov 108.49 2025 PRAGGNANANDHAA 115.17 Abdusattorov 84.95 Giri 82.43 The final standings for 2025 became clear after the World Rapid and Blitz Championships in Doha-GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov could have come within a point or two of Praggnanandhaa with double gold, but in the end it was GM Magnus Carlsen who completed that feat for the fifth time. Praggnanandhaa won the Circuit by just over 30 points. Praggnanandhaa's success was powered by first place in Tata Steel , the Superbet Chess Classic , and the UzChess Cup Masters , with shared first in the London Chess Classic Open mathematically clinching first place. Note the 0.00 points for the FIDE World Cup mattered as it fulfilled a requirement for two events with over 50 players. A total of five smaller events could be counted, so that Praggnanandhaa's scores in the Czech Republic and Poland were discounted. The Circuit for 2026-7 will operate in a very similar manner, but let's look at some significant changes. The Circuit Will Now Run Over Two Years The key change is that the cycle now runs over two years. We can expect it still to qualify two players to the Candidates, but it won't be the case as in 2024 that Caruana could already celebrate qualification and then ignore the 2025 Circuit (though, notably, he still finished in fourth place in 2025!). FIDE's announcement talks of the "expansion of the number of results counted toward the final score," though you could equally claim a reduction. Instead of up to seven results counting per year (and potentially 14 over two years), now 12 will count over two years. The regulations remain similar, with a maximum of four rapid and blitz events counting, while four events must feature more than 50 players if you want to post the maximum of 12 events. 12 Players, Not 8, Count For Tournament Strength The system for calculating scores remains almost identical except for the key change of assessing a tournament's strength by the average rating of the top 12 players and not the top eight as...

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