Gold on Home Soil: Uzbekistan Wins the 2026 Olympiad
By Cameron W. · Sun, 27 Sep 2026
Uzbekistan has won the Open section of the 46th Chess Olympiad!
Uzbekistan has won the Open section of the 46th Chess Olympiad. Entering the final round with an 18-point cushion and India breathing down their neck one point back, Abdusattorov, Sindarov, Yakubboev, Vokhidov and Madaminov only needed to avoid defeat against Ukraine to take gold outright, and did exactly that, closing out the tournament on home soil in the city where it was played. For India to have caught them, Uzbekistan needed to lose while India beat Hungary; a Uzbek draw would still have handed them the title on tiebreaks given how many of their match wins came by wide margins through the event, a 30-point tiebreak cushion over India by the time the final round began.It's Uzbekistan's second Olympiad gold. The first came in Chennai in 2022, when a teenage Abdusattorov and Yakubboev helped the country win its maiden title on Indian soil. Four years later, largely the same core group has done it again, this time in front of a home crowd in Samarkand, with Sindarov now also carrying the added weight of being this year's world championship challenger.How they got hereRook Review has followed this team from the first round, and the path to gold wasn't a straight line. Uzbekistan looked untouchable for long stretches, at one point riding a run of match wins that had them looking like the tournament's best team by a distance, before Germany finally ended the perfect record with a draw in round 8 that briefly left the two teams tied at the top. Uzbekistan answered immediately, beating the United States in round 9 to reclaim sole possession of first place, and then thumped Armenia 3.5-0.5 in round 10 to enter the last round with the cushion they needed. Along the way, Uzbekistan's second and third teams were winning matches of their own often enough that Germany's own coach, Jan Gustafsson, joked his team had managed to beat all three Uzbek squads before the tournament was through, calling it "Uzmaxxing, accomplished." The main team getting the gold is the only one of those three results that was ever going to matter for the medal table.What it meansFor a federation that has spent the last decade building a youth pipeline around players like Abdusattorov, Sindarov and Yakubboev, a second Olympiad title in four years is proof the 2022 breakthrough wasn't a one-off. It also lands at a politically loaded moment for FIDE, with the organization having just elected Timur Turlov president and Uzbekistan itself hosting both the Olympiad and this week's congress. A gold medal delivered by the host nation, on the same stretch of days that saw its own federation's global governing body pick a new leader, is the kind of coincidence Uzbek chess officials will be happy to let speak for itself.Below the top, the picture is tighter. India's result against Hungary decides whether they leave Samarkand with outright silver or get caught by Germany or Ukraine, both of whom entered the final round within a point of them and level with Hungary in the chasing group. Full medal placings behind Uzbekistan's gold will depend on how those final boards fell, and Rook Review will follow up once complete final standings are confirmed.