GMs Fabiano Caruana and Javokhir Sindarov lead the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament with 2.5 points after three rounds. Caruana won a miniature after a blunder by GM Wei Yi, and Sindarov bravely sacrificed a piece to win with the black pieces against GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. We saw draws in GMÂ Hikaru Nakamura vs. GM Anish Giri and GM Matthias Bluebaum vs. GM Andrey Esipenko.
GMs Bibisara Assaubayeva and Kateryna Lagno lead the 2026 FIDE Women’s Candidates after a wild third round. Assaubayeva’s bold opening seemed to backfire until she overcame top seed GM Zhu Jiner in complications, while GM Tan Zhongyi looked to be beating Lagno after surviving a rollercoaster only to stumble into a beautiful winning knight-and-queen sacrifice. GM Aleksandra Goryachkina went for a slow grind, but GM Divya Deshmukh escaped in 81 moves. Only GM Vaishali Rameshbabu vs. GM Anna Muzychuk was a quiet draw.
Round four is on Wednesday, April 1, starting at 8:45 a.m. ET / 14:45 CEST / 6:15 p.m. IST.
FIDE Candidates: Caruana, Sindarov Break Away
Caruana and Sindarov won the two decisive games in round three.
Candidates Round 3 Results
The leaders are now a full point ahead of their closest rivals.
Candidates Standings After Round 3
All the players with the white pieces, going into the round, had a lifetime plus score against their opponents. Still, we saw one win for White and one win for Black.
Caruana 1-0 Wei
One can hardly ask for more than 2.5 points in the first three rounds of the Candidates. Caruana now boasts four wins and no losses against Wei in their lifetime record.Â
Caruana won a 19-move miniature, even if the opening didn’t go his way—”I got a bit tricked with the move order, so I got into something I didn’t want,” he said in the press conference. Nothing objectively went wrong, but Wei had prepared this opening until 14.Qb5+, though he added, “not for this game.”
By move 14, Caruana already had 50 minutes less than his opponent. He told FM Mike Klein, “I knew it was [his] prep and I felt a bit stupid that I wasn’t really ready for this, or at least not appropriately ready. So I was kicking myself in the opening.”
 I was kicking myself in the opening.
—Fabiano Caruana
Wei sacrificed two pawns, but had full compensation with the white king stuck in the center.
Caruana didn’t think his position was bad, though, and said, “I felt like if I don’t misplay it massively… probably I can keep an OK position.” His goal was to “steer the game towards safety.”
But Wei’s 16…Rc5? was a step in the wrong direction, and 17…Ne5?? was a blunder that abruptly ended the game. Caruana said, “…Ne5?? was one of the obvious moves that he could have played, but I never expected to see it happen. I mean, normally he’s not making mistakes of this gravity.”
GM Niclas Huschenbeth summed it up as the “most confusing game so far” in the tournament, in his post on X.
Caruana vs. Wei is the most confusing game so far in the Candidates. Fabi willingly enters his opponents prep, is down almost an hour. Wei allows Fabi to trap his bishop, takes two long thinks, makes two mistakes and resigns. I suppose fortune favors the brave?! #FIDECandidates
— Niclas Huschenbeth (@GM_Huschenbeth) March 31, 2026
Caruana’s played 1.Nf3 two times and won both those games. He quipped, “It worked in terms of score, but maybe it didn’t work in terms of the position I got.” Regardless, he is back in the 2800 club on the live rating list. February 2025 was the last time his published rating was over 2800.
On the same list, Sindarov—the other player to win this round—jumped up two spots to world number-eight. Even before playing his first move, his day was off to a good start as GM Gukesh Dommaraju announced a partial withdrawal from the 2026 Grand Chess Tour to “find my best form.” Gukesh will still participate in two rapid and blitz events, but he’ll be replaced by Sindarov in two classical tournaments that take place before the world championship.
My performance in the last few events has been quite disappointing, not just for me, but for all of you who support me.
In order to find my best form my team and I have decided that I should compete with slightly less intensity over the next few months. Consequently, we feel it… pic.twitter.com/EmtAE3hn6c
— Gukesh D (@DGukesh) March 31, 2026
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Praggnanandhaa 0-1 Sindarov
This was the most exciting game of the round in the Open tournament, and this was clear quite early on. In a sharp Harrwitz Variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined, Sindarov made the bold choice of sacrificing a piece for two pawns—not necessary, but certainly a decision that catapulted the game into three-results territory.
He explained 13…Nxb4 to Klein: “If I don’t take this pawn on b4 he will just outplay me, and when I take I will have something [to play for].”
The game was chaotic, with Praggnanandhaa’s king stuck in the center and later on the queenside. Sindarov told Klein, “I was thinking, like OK, I will do something in time trouble, and it worked.”
After 33.c5? Sindarov thought he was practically winning, and the computer confirms that he was objectively winning as well—plus Praggnanandhaa had to play seven more moves in three minutes. The Uzbek GM said on the FIDE broadcast, “This game we played very tricky and I was happy to have such an easy position in time trouble.”
“He missed this …Rc2, but anyway I think his position was impossible to save,” said Sindarov, and GMÂ Rafael Leitao analyzes the Game of the Day below.
Bluebaum vs. Esipenko and Nakamura vs. Giri both ended in, comparatively, solid draws. Bluebaum had maybe a slight edge in a Queen’s Gambit Declined, but Esipenko traded off his isolated pawn and the position liquidated.Â
The game between Nakamura and Giri, which started as an English Opening, resembled the Najdorf Sicilian with colors reversed in the middlegame. With 97.5 accuracy by both sides, there also wasn’t any missed chance in that game. You can check out Nakamura’s video recap, where he dives further into the encounter between “streamerguy” and “twitterguy.”
Nakamura told Klein, “I think when you play Anish you either try to play something and hope he doesn’t know it, or you go crazy like Praggnanandhaa. I mean, obviously it worked for Pragg very well, but Anish is super solid, so it wasn’t very exciting.”
Nakamura said he isn’t so frustrated by the positions he’s getting, but the results on other boards can be. He referenced “Wei Yi just losing literally in the course of two moves out of nowhere.” Commenting again on Caruana’s good fortune, Nakamura added, “I have to be solid and not lose any more games. If I lose any more games, then I think this is just a vacation, based on how Fabi’s playing, at least so far.”
If I lose any more games, then I think this is just a vacation.
—Hikaru Nakamura
The next round pairs today’s two winners, with Sindarov having White against Caruana. The other pairings follow a sort of Swiss pattern: the two players on 1.5 points are also paired, Bluebaum vs. Praggnanandhaa, and all four players on 1 point play each other as well.Â
FIDE Candidates Round 4 Pairings
FIDE Women’s Candidates: Assaubayeva, Lagno Take The Lead
After eight draws, blood was finally spilled in round three of the Women’s Candidates.
Women’s Candidates Round 3 Results
That means Assaubayeva and Lagno lead, while the Chinese duo of Zhu and Tan are playing catchup.
Women’s Candidates Standings After Round 3
After two rounds of near misses, the Women’s Candidates exploded into life in round three. The only exception was in the game between Vaishali and Anna Muzychuk, of which the Indian star commented, “Today nothing much really happened compared to the last two days.”
Muzychuk’s start has been rock solid after only learning a week before the event that she would play, though it’s noteworthy that she’s now gone 21 Candidates games, including all 14 in Toronto 2024, without a win.
Elsewhere it seemed the players were competing to set the board on fire.
Zhu 0-1 Assaubayeva
Assaubayeva followed GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov’s bold plan of playing …Rg8 and pushing his g-pawn in the Sicilian against GM Aryan Tari from Norway Chess 2023 (Abdusattorov won, but only after a hiccup along the way!). She also followed his example in seemingly jettisoning a pawn on b3 on move 10 though, in a remarkable twist of fate, that pawn would still be there when the game ended 33 moves later! Nevertheless, Assaubayeva wasn’t thrilled with her position after 14.Bb2.
She took a 23-minute think, later commenting, “I don’t like my position at all because I don’t know how to play!” 14…d5?! (14…bxc2 was probably best, after all) was asking for trouble, which followed with 15.c4!.
Zhu had spoiled excellent positions in the first two games, however, and the same scenario followed again. She positioned her pieces awkwardly, came under fire from tactics all across the board, and finally was left defenseless after missing the last chance and allowing 29…Qg5!.Â
The rest was easy for the three-time women’s world blitz champion.
That was the first win of the 2026 Women’s Candidates, but there wasn’t long to wait for a second, and it was also scored by a three-time women’s world blitz champion against a Chinese superstar.Â
Tan 0-1 Lagno
“I feel very lucky!” admitted Lagno after one of the craziest games you’ll see at the top level. Tan sprung an opening surprise in the Italian and, after an inaccuracy Lagno struggled to explain, the Chinese former world champion achieved a close-to-winning advantage. Then she blundered, however, allowing a sequence that culminated in the position-splitting 22…Ne3+!.
If Lagno had had more time, that might be that, but instead she blundered a piece in the run-up to the time control and admitted, “Honestly, I wanted to resign!”
She didn’t, and was rewarded by Tan needlessly rushing her 41st move, after which dark clouds were looming over her position. One more mistake and Lagno pounced with a brilliant knight sacrifice that was based on an even more brilliant queen sacrifice.
Anna & Tania spot Kateryna Lagno’s brilliant plan to sac her queen for checkmate! https://t.co/566ueS4Uqn#FIDECandidates pic.twitter.com/PPp5JbNoad
— chess24 (@chess24com) March 31, 2026
45…g4!! was move of the day, especially because you had to have seen it in advance.
Lagno took time out to narrate all the twists and turns herself.
It looked like we would have three leaders, but Divya’s hopes the day before that her luck would come back to her came true, even if by saving a lost position instead of winning a won one!Â
Goryachkina ½-½ DivyaÂ
The final game of the day to finish had seen Goryachkina take over by stages, with each questionable decision by Divya (to go for a forced exchange of minor pieces early on, not to trade queens when given a chance, to trade down into a heavy-piece endgame) slightly worsening her position. Ultimately Goryachkina achieved a winning rook endgame a pawn up, but as has often been bitterly remarked, all rook endgames are drawn!
The win was never easy, and at the very end Goryachkina even suffered the indignity of being nominally on the worse side before the game ended with bare kings.
A great escape for Divya Deshmukh ends Round 3 of the #FIDECandidates! https://t.co/kCVd2DTFb0 pic.twitter.com/8Sqf8uPiJc
— chess24 (@chess24com) March 31, 2026
It’s one for the endgame experts to pinpoint exactly where White went wrong.
Divya and Goryachkina therefore both remain on 50 percent, while we finally have leaders in the tournament. Lagno has Black vs. Muzychuk while Assaubayeva is White against Tan, with both Chinese players getting the black pieces as they attempt to bounce back.
FIDE Women’s Candidates: Round 4 PairingsÂ
Round four will be the last before the first rest day.
Colin McGourty contributed to this report.
You can watch the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament on Chess24’s YouTube and Twitch channels. The games can also be followed from our Events Page.
The FIDE Candidates Tournament is the most important FIDE tournament of the year. In the Open and Women’s events, eight players play each other twice for the right to challenge the FIDE World Champions Gukesh Dommaraju and Ju Wenjun to a match for the title.
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