Total Chess Starts Today With Blitz Tournament
By Cameron W. · Tue, 10 Nov 2026
Total Chess opens in Budapest with a nine-round blitz Swiss that sets all later seeding and tiebreaks. Carlsen leads the field of 24, with no prize at stake.
Nobody will lift a trophy on the opening day, and nobody will take home a check. Even so, the nine blitz rounds that open the Total Chess pilot in Budapest may be the most important day of the whole event. Twenty-four players, 3+2 time control, one Swiss, and a ranking that decides tiebreaks, seeding and even who gets the colour choice later on.
Why a day with no prize matters
The blitz Swiss on November 10 carries no points and no prize money. What it produces is a rank from one to twenty-four, and that rank is used in three ways. Players level on points in the group stage are separated by their blitz finish. In each knockout bracket, players are seeded by blitz rank, with the top seed facing the fourth and the second facing the third in the semifinals. And in every knockout match, the higher-ranked player picks the colour for the first blitz game of day one. Ties inside the Swiss itself go to Buchholz, then performance rating, then a draw of lots.
One thing the blitz does not touch is the group draw. Groups of six are drawn by lot at the opening ceremony, with only the top four by standard rating kept apart. After that come five days of double round-robin play at 45 minutes plus 30 seconds per move, a rest day on November 16, and two-day knockout matches that mix blitz, rapid and fast classical games. The pilot ends on November 20, though one article lists November 21, so check the final schedule.
The field and the favourite
On blitz ratings, the numbers lean one way. Magnus Carlsen is listed at 2860, followed by Nodirbek Abdusattorov at 2819 and Alireza Firouzja at 2797. By simple subtraction, Carlsen is 41 points clear of the next name. Arjun Erigaisi (2766), Ian Nepomniachtchi (2765), Wesley So (2745) and Fabiano Caruana (2738) follow, with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Levon Aronian, R. Praggnanandhaa and Hans Niemann in the next group.
The full field includes Anish Giri, Vincent Keymer, Richard Rapport, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and the newly added Liem Le, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Jorden van Foreest, Abhimanyu Mishra and Andrew Hong. The women's seats are held by Bibisara Assaubayeva and Vaishali Rameshbabu, who sit at the bottom of the blitz rating list at 2424 and 2345. In a nine-round Swiss, though, that is the sort of gap that creates the pairings everyone remembers: a lower-rated player gets a strong opponent and the crowd gets a story.
Three of the biggest names in the sport are missing. World Champion Gukesh D, challenger Javokhir Sindarov and Hikaru Nakamura are not in the field, and Gukesh and Sindarov open their World Championship match in Geneva on November 24, soon after the pilot ends.
What is at stake
The pilot offers a $650,000 prize fund, with $80,000 for first place and $10,000 for last. Its winner is not a world champion, and no Tour points are awarded. The top three finishers earn a place in the first 2027 Tour event, unless they have already qualified another way. In other words, this is a rehearsal for a full tour that begins next year, and it is already a high-stakes one.
On the broadcast side, Anna Rudolf, Fiona Steil-Antoni, David Howell and Jovanka Houska will anchor the main show, with Levy Rozman hosting a daily highlights program. Where and when to watch has not been confirmed in the material available.
What to watch
Blitz is chess with the safety off, and a nine-round Swiss gives a favourite almost no room for a bad hour. If Carlsen tops the table, he will walk into the knockouts as the top seed with the colour choice in his hands. If he does not, that tells the rest of the field something too.
Sources
- ChessBase, Total Chess in Budapest: the format explained
- ChessBase, Total Chess pilot format
- ChessBase, six more stars announced for the pilot
- FIDE, six more stars for the Budapest pilot
- FIDE, Total Chess broadcast team and highlight show
- World Chess, Total Chess 2026: everything you need to know
- Wikipedia, Total Chess World Championship 2026
