GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov is the first player to win the Prague Chess Festival Masters twice after an effortless draw against GM Hans Niemann in the final round was enough to win by a full point. Long-term leader GM Jorden van Foreest crashed and burned against GM Parham Maghsoodloo, who caught him in second place. GM Aravindh Chithambaram also made the tie for second after defeating GM David Navara. World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju finally won, against GM David Anton, thereby avoiding last place and climbing five places to world number 15.
16-year-old IM Vaclav Finek has won the 2026 Prague Chess Festival Challengers after beating GM Thomas Beerdsen to take clear first place despite second-place GM Daniil Yuffa scoring a lightning-fast win over IM Jachym Nemec. Finek qualifies for the 2027 Masters and has also gained his final GM norm to earn the title. GM Divya Deshmukh tricked IM Stepan Hrbek to snatch third place with a performance that puts her back in the Women’s top 10.
Masters: Abdusattorov Can’t Stop Winning
It was in keeping with this year’s Prague Masters that we got four big fights—and one professional draw to clinch the title.
Round 9 Results: Masters
In the end Abdusattorov finished unbeaten, a full point ahead of his pursuers. Gukesh avoided last place on the tiebreak of winning his head-to-head encounter with Anton.
Final Standings: Masters
The dream run continues for Abdusattorov, who has now won three strong classical round-robins in a row: the 2025 London Chess Classic, the 2026 Tata Steel Chess Masters, and the Prague Masters. In the process he’s climbed from world number 17 to number four on the live rating list, opening up an almost 18-point lead over Keymer.
Abdusattorov unfortunately didn’t qualify for this year’s FIDE Candidates Tournament, but he’s increased his lead in the 2026-7 FIDE Circuit that will decide one spot in the 2028 Candidates—he should earn 23.14 points in Prague to add to the 25.78 points he won in Wijk aan Zee.
Abdusattorov went into the final round with a half-point lead, and decided on a safety-first approach: “I just wanted to make a draw today because I thought this is a good strategy… If [Jorden] wins with the black pieces against Parham, OK, at least he deserves to play a tiebreak.” What followed was, indeed, a quick and painless draw.
When Abdusattorov was interviewed by WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili after the game he didn’t yet know if he’d need to play a tiebreak, but he was very pleased with his own job:
I’m generally very happy with my performance overall. I didn’t lose a single game, I won three, it was a little bit lucky at some point, but also I could score more by beating Vincent because I had a good advantage. Overall, I think it was a very balanced tournament for me.
A rollercoaster win over the world champion had been the icing on the cake.
Abdusattorov commented, “In general I’m a morning person, so it’s natural for me to be in good shape in the morning,” about the final round starting four hours earlier than usual, but that may not have applied to some of his rivals.
That would be one explanation for all that went wrong for Van Foreest in the final round, but the other was the blow he’d suffered the day before. “It could be tilt from yesterday’s game, because there was zero chance to lose that endgame, and he lost,” said Maghsoodloo of a game where Van Foreest gave up a pawn in the opening. “Obviously Jorden is bluffing,” said Abdusattorov, while Maghsoodloo agreed: “Either he’s bluffing or it’s just a brilliancy!”
No hidden depth emerged, but the clock times gave some hope of Van Foreest getting the win he needed to force a playoff. When he went for 27…Nxd2??, however, it was the end of the road for his title hopes.
“What he did was insane!” was Maghsoodloo’s verdict, with the assumption that the Dutch number two had simply overlooked the double attack 29.Qb6! a couple of moves later. There was no way back.
That meant Maghsoodloo ended a tournament he began with a loss on +1, and in second place. The Iranian star said his play had been, “a pretty good level,” and he noted his results with White: “Out of my white pieces I scored +2, against Gukesh, Keymer, Abdusattorov, and Jorden, which is amazing!”
For Van Foreest, meanwhile, gaining rating points and climbing above Gukesh to world number 14 was hardly bad, but it was hard to forget he’d been dominating the tournament after five rounds and climbed to the brink of the world top 10.
The other player to join Maghsoodloo and Van Foreest on 5/9 was defending champion Aravindh, who shrugged off losing three of his first five games to finish with three wins in four and 6.4 rating points gained for the event. In the final round the Indian star beat local hero Navara, who ended with two losses but overall had played a brilliant event. Even the last round featured a fantastic find, 40…e4!, that could have saved the day.
If the pawn is taken 41…Bb8+ suddenly wins the rook on a6. Aravindh managed to regroup brilliantly however and exploit one inaccuracy to go on and win the game.
Navara finished on 50 percent, level with GM Nodirbek Yakubboev, who ended with a win over the pre-tournament top seed GM Vincent Keymer. Keymer’s 2026 has been surprisingly erratic and while four losses were eventually compensated by six wins in Wijk aan Zee, here the balance was two wins and three losses, costing 13.9 rating points.
The star player whose misfortunes have been most in focus, however, is the world champion. Gukesh went into the final round having lost three games, won none, at number 20 on the live rating list, and one point adrift of Anton in last place. That was a hole he couldn’t fully dig himself out of in a single round, but a win saw him climb to number 15 and out of last place, on the tiebreak of the direct encounter.
Gukesh’s consolation win is our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao analyzes below.
That wasn’t, of course, all the action in Prague. 14-year-old Polish WCM Kaja Rzadkowska won the Futures with 7/9.
Meanwhile 45-year-old Indian GM Krishnan Sasikiran, with a career peak of world number 25, qualified for the 2027 Challengers by winning the Karel Janecek Open. Sasikiran offered a draw in the final round but, when it was rejected, went on to win and score 8/9.
It’s noteworthy that 14-year-old German prodigy Christian Gloeckler almost pulled off the remarkable feat of qualifying for both the Tata Steel and Prague Challengers—he finished half a point back on 7.5/9.
That brings us to the Challengers.
Challengers: Finek Wins On Demand To Qualify For Masters
All five games were decisive in a dramatic final round.
Round 9 Results: Challengers
Both leaders won, meaning Finek took the title and the spot in next year’s Masters.
Final Standings: Challengers
Finek went into the final round with a half-point lead over Yuffa, but it didn’t take long for that lead to be wiped out. Nemec went for a tempting piece sac only to stumble into a crushing queen sacrifice.
There was no defense as Black won in 20 moves, denying Nemec a grandmaster norm. Yuffa was apologetic:
This was such serendipity! Even in my weirdest dream I could not foresee and expect that it would end up like that. To be honest, I feel very, very sorry for my opponent because that was the line where I lost to Gukesh less than a year ago, more or less in the same number of moves.
Yuffa in fact only resigned on move 35 against Gukesh in round three of the 2025 FIDE Grand Swiss, but he was lost by around move 13. Yuffa had studied where he went wrong and taught the same lesson to his 17-year-old opponent.
Yuffa was thrilled to have won a third game in a row, calling it “fate or destiny, because in the last half-year I managed to lose three consecutive games thrice!” The win seemed to give every chance of a playoff for first place against Finek, but the 16-year-old had other ideas.
“I started to play for a win when I saw it,” said Finek about seeing Yuffa’s win. He was already making good progress with Black when Beerdsen’s 33.Ne2? allowed the crushing 33…d4!.
That win was Finek’s third and final GM norm, so he’ll be a 17-year-old grandmaster when he plays in the 2027 Prague Masters. “I like that I can play with very strong players next year,” he said of the challenge ahead.
Third place in the Challengers was taken by Divya, who had been on the ropes against Hrbek but successfully set a trap to finish on a +1 score.
That capped a fine result for Divya as she prepares for the FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament later this month.
Curiously Divya lost only one game, to her fellow Candidate GM Zhu Jiner, who dropped from second to fourth place on the Women’s standings while Divya climbed back into the top 10.
So that’s all for the 2026 Prague Chess Festival. We hope you enjoyed the 10 days of attacking chess!
How To Rewatch
The 2026 Prague Chess Festival took place on February 25-March 6 at the Don Giovanni Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. The format was a round-robin with 10 players in Masters, Challengers, and Futures groups, as well as an Open tournament. The time control was 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move starting on move one.
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