Wadim Rosenstein Promises Funding For All Federations
By Douglas C. · Tue, 15 Sep 2026
Wadim Rosenstein and running mate Gordon Tang have announced a €10 million investment programme for FIDE's national federations, pledged jointly in an open letter posted the same day the Olympiad opened in Samarkand.
Wadim Rosenstein and running mate Gordon Tang have announced a €10 million investment programme for FIDE's national federations, pledged jointly in an open letter posted the same day the Olympiad opened in Samarkand.The programme is built around three allocations. €4.5 million would go directly to national federations across every continent, aimed at covering what the letter calls their most pressing needs. €3.5 million is earmarked for federation infrastructure specifically, digitalization, IT systems, federation services, and broader institutional modernization. The remaining €2 million would fund global development programmes covering youth chess, women's chess, education, inclusive chess, and social impact work.Rosenstein and Tang frame the figure as a direct response to what they say federations have told them throughout the campaign, that they need more resources, better infrastructure, and direct, practical support rather than abstract promises. The letter commits to governing the money through what it calls clear, transparent, and objective criteria, with federations able to know in advance what support is available and how allocation decisions get made, explicitly positioning this against bureaucratic or opaque distribution.This gives Rosenstein's campaign its own specific financial commitment to set against the other two tickets, joining a season where concrete numbers have become something of a competitive currency. Buettner's platform has centered on a proposed 20% revenue share for federations and a $50 million commercial growth target. Turlov has pledged to personally backstop FIDE's Development Fund to the tune of $5 to 7 million and act as an anchor sponsor for events lacking secured funding. Rosenstein's €10 million pledge is the most specific total figure any of the three tickets has put forward to date, though, as with the other campaigns' commitments, it remains a pledge rather than a budgeted line item, and its feasibility will depend on revenue FIDE would still need to raise or reallocate to fund it.The timing is notable on its own. This announcement lands on a day already crowded with Olympiad-adjacent controversy, from a national team's public complaints about hotel logistics in Samarkand to a rival candidate's allegation of a politically motivated visa denial. A substantive policy pitch, aimed squarely at the federations whose votes will decide the election in eleven days, gives Rosenstein's campaign a positive story to tell on a day when the news cycle around the race has otherwise leaned toward dysfunction.