Nakamura Endorses Rosenstein Amidst Turbulence
By Douglas C. · Tue, 28 Jul 2026
Hikaru Nakamura doesn't hand out endorsements lightly, so when he said this week, "Wadim Rosenstein is the person that I want to win," it landed. The timing couldn't have been better for Rosenstein either.
Hikaru Nakamura doesn't hand out endorsements lightly, so when he said this week, "Wadim Rosenstein is the person that I want to win," it landed. The timing couldn't have been better for Rosenstein either. After a brutal fortnight in FIDE politics, the World No. 3's backing is the kind of headline his campaign needed.Not a stranger's endorsementThis isn't Nakamura weighing in from a distance. The two have actual history. Back in June, Nakamura flew to Manila as Rosenstein's personal partner in the inaugural WR Bughouse Championship, a $100,000 event Rosenstein funded and organized himself, where the two of them literally sharing a board as teammates in front of a packed house of Filipino fans. Just this week, Nakamura suited up again for Rosenstein's WR Chess Team USA vs. Uzbekistan event in Miami. Whatever else this endorsement is, it isn't a cold political calculation from someone who's never met the man.What Nakamura actually saidSpeaking on his stream, Nakamura made clear his frustration runs deeper than personalities, it's about the direction FIDE has taken under the current administration, from rule changes to what he sees as chaos around Emil Sutovsky's push to convert World Championship qualification into an open Swiss event rather than keeping it classical. Nakamura says he raised exactly this with Rosenstein directly, and came away satisfied: Rosenstein told him he'd keep classical chess as the qualification format if elected, a position Nakamura clearly sees as the correct one. He went further, predicting that if Turlov's ticket doesn't win in Samarkand, most of the recent format changes get unwound regardless of who ends up in charge.“I would probably say that Wadim Rosenstein is the person that I want to win. It’s obviously very murky with FIDE elections. But I just feel that we’ve had enough of this stuff with Sutovsky, Dvorkovich, and all these changes that were recently introduced. So, I would say that if I’m going to support someone, it would be Wadim.I asked Wadim about the cycle and qualification. He did say he believes that when it comes to the FIDE World Championship, the qualification should be Classical chess. And that is a very important thing to note because currently Emil Sutovsky’s brainchild was to basically change the FIDE World Cup from the current format of Classical chess to an open Swiss tournament 45+30 and then have it back with the other format.I actually think it’s a very good stand that the intention is to have the qualification be from Classical chess if Wadim were to win. So even though these changes were announced, if the current ticket with Turlov does not win, I expect a lot of these changes to be reversed.”Why Rosenstein needed thisThe endorsement arrives after what's been genuinely rough stretch for his campaign. Ten days ago, the European Chess Union held its own elections in Bucharest, and the ticket Rosenstein backed was routed with just 7 of 53 votes, against 35 for the re-elected incumbent. Rival candidate Jan Henric Buettner wasted no time capitalizing, publicly inviting Rosenstein's European supporters to defect to his own coalition. Then today, in Addis Ababa, Tshepiso Lopang – the ACC's sitting president and a figure aligned with Rosenstein's camp – lost her own re-election bid to Benard Wanjala by a single vote, 25 to 24.However, there have been allegations of bribery and corruption floating around in the hours after the election, so things might change quickly.Nonetheless, two real defeats in ten days, on two different continents, is not the momentum a campaign wants heading into a contested three-way race. Nakamura's endorsement doesn't undo either result. But it does something a federation vote can't: it puts a top-three player in the world, with real name recognition beyond the chess world itself, publicly on record backing Rosenstein's platform on one of the most contentious issues in the sport: how the World Championship itself gets decided. Whether that resonates with the federations Rosenstein still needs to win over in Samarkand is a separate question. But for a campaign that's spent the last two weeks absorbing bad news, it's the first genuinely good headline in a while.