Column: Carlsen Keeps Winning Everything Except The One Title He Doesn't Want
Sat, 18 Jul 2026
The best player alive has spent a year proving he's still the best player alive, in every format except the one that carries his old title.
Add up Magnus Carlsen's last eight months: a Rapid title, a Blitz title, and a Freestyle Chess world championship, the last of them his 21st world title across formats. The one championship he isn't chasing is the one most casual fans still call the real one — classical.Carlsen stepped away from defending the classical crown in 2023, and nothing since has suggested he regrets it. Sindarov and Gukesh will spend November fighting over a title Carlsen could plausibly still hold if he wanted it, in a format he has said bores him and has structured his entire competitive calendar around avoiding.That's not a knock on the classical game, which still draws the sport's biggest audiences and its richest match purses — a fact FIDE leans on every time it defends the four-week world championship format against critics who want something shorter and faster. But it's worth sitting with the strangeness of the current moment: the best player alive, by rating and by results, has spent a year proving he's still the best player alive in every format except the one that carries his old title.The uncomfortable question this raises for FIDE isn't really about Carlsen at all — it's about what "world champion" is supposed to mean when the sport's most dominant player has opted out of the format that title describes, and audiences seem to be following him toward the formats he prefers rather than the other way around.Gukesh and Sindarov deserve every bit of attention their match will get in November. But anyone claiming classical still sits unchallenged atop the sport's hierarchy is describing a hierarchy Carlsen quietly stopped participating in three years ago — and hasn't looked back since.