Chess Olympiad 2026: final results, standings and how the tiebreaks decided the podium

Short answer

The 46th Chess Olympiad in Samarkand ended on 27 September 2026 with Uzbekistan winning the open (20 of 22 match points, one loss) and China winning the women's event (20 points, unbeaten). India and Germany completed the open podium; Kazakhstan and India, the women's. This page gives the official top ten in each event, explains the tiebreak that separated silver, bronze and fourth place, and records where the Latin American teams and Canada finished.

Event: 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad

How this was compiled: Checked on 29 September 2026, with all 11 rounds finished on 27 September. Standings, match points and tiebreaks come from the final chess-results tables for the open and women's events; the TB2 tiebreak was recalculated from the cross table and matched the official figure for the top seven teams in the open. Match scores were checked against the official PGN broadcast on Lichess.

The essentials in a few lines

• Open: Uzbekistan won with 20 match points (10 wins, 1 loss), India took silver and Germany bronze, both on 18; the USA finished 4th on 17.
• Women: China won with 20 match points, unbeaten (9 wins, 2 draws), Kazakhstan took silver with 18 and India bronze with 17, on tiebreak ahead of the USA, Poland, Armenia and Mongolia.
• The Olympiad's first tiebreak is the Olympiad Sonneborn-Berger: for each opponent, their match points times the game points scored against them, summed, with the opponent on the fewest match points left out.
• Game points only come in as the third criterion: the US women scored 32.5, more than India's 31, and missed the podium on the second criterion, 418 to 424.
• Argentina was the best Latin American team in both events: 23rd in the open and 22nd in the women's, with 15 match points each; Brazil finished 44th in the open and 46th in the women's.

The two champions

An Olympiad is decided by the match, not the game. A match win is worth 2 points, a draw 1, and the margin inside the match does not count: 2.5–1.5 is worth the same as 4–0. That is why Uzbekistan's campaign reads better in the losses column than in the landslides. Ten wins in eleven rounds, including India (2.5–1.5), China (3–1), the USA (2.5–1.5) and Armenia (3.5–0.5), and one 1.5–2.5 defeat to Germany.

The Uzbeks reached the last round on 18 points, one ahead of India and two ahead of Germany. They beat Ukraine 2.5–1.5, with three draws and Mukhiddin Madaminov's win over Roman Dehtiarov on board four. With India drawing Hungary in the same round, even a 2–2 would have been enough. It is the country's second Olympiad gold, after Chennai 2022, and its first at home.

China's women produced the steadiest campaign in either event: no match lost and 33 game points out of 44, the highest total in the women's section. In the final round they beat Vietnam 3–1, while Kazakhstan drew with Poland and secured silver outright.

Final standings: open

The table below is the official one, published by chess-results after round 11. The TB2 column is the first tiebreak, explained in the next section. It only matters between teams on the same match points, which is why Germany sits above the USA with a lower TB2: it has one more match point.

Two readings come out of the table. The first is the champion's margin: two match points, a whole match, and 32.5 game points, the highest total in the open. The second is the congestion just below the podium. Four teams finished on 17 points and five on 16. A single half point in a last-round game moves a team four or five places, and that is what happened to Hungary: the draw with India left them 7th, and a win would have put them on the podium.

Some tables published in the chess press just after the closing ceremony differ from the official one in places 4 to 11. On this page the chess-results table applies, as it is the arbiters' table.

Final standings: women

The women's podium was the tightest fight of the Olympiad. Five teams reached 17 match points, and only one could take bronze. India finished with three draws in the last four rounds (Kazakhstan, China and Georgia) and still took the medal, because the tiebreak rewards teams that faced strong opponents and scored against them.

The USA is the case that stands out. They scored 32.5 game points, the second-highest total in the women's event behind only China, and finished fourth. The explanation lies in the matches they lost: 1–3 to India in round 6 and 1.5–2.5 to Armenia in round 8. Beating weaker teams heavily earns game points, and game points only come in as the third criterion.

Kazakhstan took silver without needing a tiebreak. They drew with China in round 7 and with India in round 8, and closed with a 2–2 against Poland in the last round, enough to finish a point clear of the group on 17.

The tiebreak that separated silver, bronze and fourth

The calculation looks bureaucratic and has a simple logic: half a point against a team that finished well is worth more than three points against a team that finished badly. We redid the calculation from the official cross table, and it matches chess-results for the top seven teams in the open. For Uzbekistan, the eleven products add up to 495.5; the dropped one is Jamaica's, their round-1 opponent, who finished on 10 match points and against whom the Uzbeks scored 4 (10 × 4 = 40). That leaves 455.5.

Between India and Germany, level on 18, India took silver 405.5 to 386.5. The difference has a visible origin: Germany lost 1–3 to China and scored little against a team that finished on 16 match points. The head-to-head is not a criterion, but here it points the same way: India beat Germany 2.5–1.5 in round 9.

In the women's event, India's bronze over the USA was decided 424 to 418. The Americans scored more overall, but lost precisely to India and Armenia, two teams from the top group, and the criterion weighs exactly those matches. Anyone who wants to check the arithmetic will find the full cross table on chess-results, with opponent and score for every round.

• TB1: match points (2 for a match win, 1 for a draw).
• TB2: Olympiad Sonneborn-Berger, without the opponent on the fewest match points.
• TB3: game points, the sum of the individual results.
• TB4: sum of the opponents' match points, also without the weakest.

Latin America and Canada

The open had a tight Latin American group between 33rd and 53rd place, all on 13 or 14 match points. The gap to the top can be measured in one match: Peru, 33rd, was the only Latin American team to face the champions and lost 0.5–3.5 in round 2. Brazil scored 14 match points, the same as Peru, Chile and Canada, and finished behind all three on tiebreak, with a TB2 of 266.5; it also had the lowest game-point total of the group, 24.

In the women's event, Cuba, 31st, and Colombia, 37th, finished just behind Argentina, and two players from the region performed above their rating: Deysi Cori of Peru had a 2447 performance on board one, and María José Campos of Argentina 2353 on board two.

Frequently asked questions

Update log

• 2026-09-29 — First published two days after the final round: official standings for both events and the tiebreak recalculated from the cross table.

Sources

• 46th Chess Olympiad 2026 Open — final standings and tiebreaks — chess-results
• 46th Chess Olympiad 2026 Women — final standings and tiebreaks — chess-results
• Uzbekistan's dream finish: Olympiad gold in Samarkand — FIDE
• Uzbekistan, China Win 2026 Samarkand Chess Olympiad — Chess.com

Related guides

• Corporate chess leagues: what changes when the point belongs to the team
• How to avoid time trouble in chess: five rules for the last three minutes
• How to bounce back after a loss in a chess tournament: a three-step mental reset