Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026: favourites, format and the teams to watch

Short answer

The 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad opens on 15 September 2026 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, with 208 teams in the open section and 192 in the women's: 400 in all, twenty more than the Budapest 2024 record, according to FIDE. Eleven Swiss rounds run until 27 September. This preview covers the format and scoring in the regulations, the top seeds in both sections, where Canada and the Latin American teams start, and why a rating average is a fair way to order teams and a poor way to pick the winner.

Event: 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad

How this was compiled: Checked on 13 September 2026, two days before the opening ceremony; no games had been played. Dates, format, scoring and time control come from FIDE's regulations for the main competition. Team counts and five-player averages come from FIDE's line-up announcement. Seeds, top-four averages and board order come from the chess-results starting lists as updated on 13 September at 14:49 (server time), which state that board order is provisional, by rating, until captains submit the fixed order. At that update chess-results showed 150 teams loaded in each section, against the 208 and 192 announced by FIDE, so seed numbers may move as the rest are added.

The essentials in a few lines

• The 46th Chess Olympiad opens on 15 September 2026, with 11 rounds from 16 to 27 September in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and 208 open and 192 women's teams: 400 in total, against the previous record of 380 at Budapest 2024, according to FIDE.
• Each team has four players and one reserve. Winning a match scores 2 match points, a draw 1 and a loss 0, so a 4-0 counts the same as a 2.5-1.5; game points only matter for tie-breaks. The time control is 90 minutes for 40 moves, then 30 minutes, with a 30-second increment from move one.
• The top five open seeds are the United States, India, Uzbekistan, China and Germany. India top the women's list and arrive as double champions from Budapest 2024.
• Canada are the 41st open seed with a top-four average of 2486 and the 38th women's seed with 2185 on the chess-results starting lists; Argentina are the highest Latin American open seed, 24th, and Brazil start 31st.
• On FIDE's five-player averages, the top four open seeds are separated by 16 points: the United States on 2738 and China on 2722.

Dates, format and a record field

FIDE says 400 teams have confirmed: 208 in the open and 192 in the women's section, twenty more than the 380 at Budapest in 2024, the previous record. It is the largest Olympiad by number of teams. That is a count of federations that sent a team, not of teams with a chance of a medal.

The regulations count matches, not games. Winning a match earns 2 match points, a 2-2 draw earns 1 and a loss earns nothing, so a 4-0 is worth exactly as much as a 2.5-1.5 in the standings. Big wins only come back into play at the tie-break stage: the first criterion multiplies the game points scored against each opponent by that opponent's final match points, and the second is the plain sum of game points.

Two rules shape how a round is played. Players may not agree a draw before Black's 30th move; before that, only threefold repetition or stalemate ends a game drawn. And the team listed first in the pairing has White on the odd boards and Black on the even ones, which makes a captain think about board order by colour as well as by strength.

The open section favourites

A rating average is the fairest way to order 208 teams and a weak way to predict a winner. On FIDE's numbers, the first and fourth seeds are 16 points apart, fewer than the 27 that separate Caruana from So inside the American team. At that margin, eleven rounds settle more than the spreadsheet does.

Hosts Uzbekistan have Javokhir Sindarov (2777) on top board, rated above any Indian or Chinese top board, with Nodirbek Abdusattorov (2762) behind him. China bring Wei Yi (2752) and Ding Liren (2733) on the first two boards, and Germany, fifth, have Vincent Keymer on board one.

The two averages in the table do not match, and neither source is wrong. FIDE's announcement averages all five players; chess-results averages the top four, using ratings that are not always the ones FIDE used. The order of the top five is the same either way. Gukesh sits on India's fourth board because, until captains submit the fixed order, the list follows rating.

The women's section favourites

The spread among the top five is wider here than in the open: 63 points between India and the United States on FIDE's averages, against 13 between the same two countries in the open section. It is the section where seeding counts for more, and even so the gap between second and fifth is 36 points.

The China–Kazakhstan swap is a good reason to read a starting list with its source beside it. FIDE gives China 2432 and Kazakhstan 2421; chess-results, averaging the top four on the rating list it uses, gives Kazakhstan 2438 and China 2429. Neither count is wrong, and neither decides the podium.

Canada and Latin America on the starting list

Argentina bring Faustino Oro, whom FIDE describes as the second-youngest grandmaster in history. Across the open section the Latin American block runs from 24th to 87th on the starting list, and in the women's section from 27th to 94th.

These seed numbers come from the 13 September chess-results update, which did not yet include every team FIDE announced. The absolute positions may shift; the relative order between these teams, which depends only on their own averages, is likely to hold.

Brazil's two teams

That order is the provisional rating order on chess-results; the fixed board order is submitted by the captains and is what counts in the rounds. The two teams are built differently: the open side has grandmasters on the first three boards and 192 points between its first and fifth names, while the women's top two are 3 points apart and the gap to the fifth player is 269, so the choice of who rests each round moves the women's average on the board far more.

Frequently asked questions

Update log

• 2026-09-13 — Initial publication, two days before the opening, with format and scoring checked against FIDE's regulations and seeds read from the chess-results starting lists.

Sources

• FIDE Chess Olympiad 2026 — Regulations for the Main Competition — FIDE
• Team line-ups confirmed for 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad — FIDE
• 46th Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026 Open — starting list and team compositions — Chess-Results
• 46th Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026 Women — starting list and team compositions — Chess-Results

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