Candidates Chess 2026 takes place in Paphos, Cyprus, from 28 March to 16 April 2026. It is an eight-player double round-robin, meaning each participant plays every other player twice (14 rounds total).
Participants include Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, R Praggnanandhaa, Anish Giri, Wei Yi, Andrey Esipenko, Javokhir Sindarov, and Matthias Blübaum. Candidates Chess 2026 start with round 1 on March 29th. The final round is April 16th.
Round 1 starts Sunday March 29th at 8:45am EDT, 3:45pm Cyprus, 6:15pm India. Live video coverage will be provided by Hikaru Nakamura’s channel on Kick, with Jon Ludvig Hammer and Fiona Steil-Antoni