The International Chess Federation has adopted new qualification paths for the 2028 FIDE Candidates and Women’s Candidates Tournaments that will decide future world championship challengers. The rating spot GM Hikaru Nakamura used to qualify in 2026 is gone, the FIDE World Cup now provides two spots instead of three, and the new fast classical, rapid, and blitz Total Chess World Championship Tour gains two spots.
The 2026 Candidates winners GMs Javokhir Sindarov and Vaishali Rameshbabu are yet to play their World Championship matches against GMs Gukesh Dommaraju and Ju Wenjun respectively, but the path to challenge the winners of those matches is already clear. Once again there will be eight-player Candidates Tournaments, but the qualification system has changed.
For the Open tournament there are several headline changes, with only the FIDE Grand Swiss route staying the same. The changes are:
1) The FIDE World Cup now selects two players, not three
A day after FIDE announced a complete overhaul of the 2027 FIDE World Cup, shortening the event and adding a Swiss group stage, we now know that its significance has been reduced, with one less player qualifying for the Candidates. In 2025 that would have meant GM Andrey Esipenko missing out on a spot.
The change may in part have been motivated by the randomness of knockout tournaments—by the Quarterfinals in 2025 we knew that all three qualification spots would go to players who had never played in the Candidates before, though it has to be said, one of those, Sindarov, didn’t do too badly in the main event!
2) The FIDE Circuit spots are now combined instead of yearly
It was already announced in January that the FIDE Circuit, a leaderboard based on performances in strong events, would now run over two years. That means that instead of a one-year race, providing a spot in 2024 for GM Fabiano Caruana and in 2025 for GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, two Candidates places will now be decided only at the end of 2027 based on the previous two years.
The recent announcement mentions rewarding “sustained excellence over a longer period,” while the hope may also be to give time for clear winners to emerge, avoiding the last-minute scrambles we’ve seen in previous years.
3) The rating spot is gone
Qualification by rating had been controversial even before Nakamura’s path to qualification for the 2026 Candidates involved a series of U.S. state championships used to fulfil the required number of games. The rating spot provided little incentive for someone with the necessary rating to play more chess.
That spot is now gone, with the announcement stating: “This change places greater emphasis on sporting results achieved during the World Championship cycle and creates a qualification system based entirely on competitive performance across the Grand Swiss, World Cup, Total Chess World Championship Tour (Open), Women’s Grand Prix (Women), and the FIDE Circuit.” Â
The biggest change for the 2028 FIDE Candidates, however, is the addition of an entirely new path.
4) Two spots go to the Total Chess World Championship Tour
The Norway Chess and Erling Haaland-backed Total Chess World Championship Tour will launch with a pilot edition later this year before returning as a four-tournament $2.7 million series in 2027. The event will crown a world champion after players do battle in fast classical (45 minutes + a 30-second increment per move), rapid (15+10) and blitz (3+2) chess, but the top-two players will now also qualify for the Candidates to decide the classical world champion.
The qualification for the Women’s Candidates Tournament has altered less, with the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix and Grand Swiss still both providing two spots. As in the Open section, the Women’s World Cup now provides two players instead of three, while the remaining change is more technical.Â
Two spots will now be allocated to the 2026-7 FIDE Women’s Circuit, which expands on the number of eligible events compared to the previous Events Series. The current leaderboard is dominated by players who competed in the Women’s Candidates Tournament, but Norway Chess is counted, as is the European Women’s Championship that was sensationally won by then 15-year-old WFM Anastasiia Hnatyshyn.
Her heroics have taken her up to fourth place on the leaderboard.
GM Bibisara Assaubayeva, who qualified by the equivalent path in 2026, is the early leader.
FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich summed up the reasoning behind the new qualifilcation paths: “These changes have been carefully developed to make the qualification process more balanced, transparent, and performance-based.”
One person who approved of the World Cup change and was also immediately on board with the new Candidates system was GM Hans Niemann.
Absolutely amazing announcement. Really happy that FIDE is innovating and moving chess forward. The rating spot was terrible and many players took advantage. More spots to the FIDE Circuit and Total Chess Tour is also incredble. Looking forward to the next cycle! https://t.co/vwJUkVYFpK
— Hans Niemann (@HansMokeNiemann) July 14, 2026
Some others have questioned, however, whether there’s now too much emphasis on faster time controls.
Fast classical was introduced as an “experiment”?
What were the results and how were they so amazing that within a year the policy changed to make it contribute to 50-60% of candidates qualification? https://t.co/0NLgM1juqA
— Chess Numbers India (@chess_insights) July 14, 2026
What do you think of the new system? Let us know in the comments below!