The FIDE World Cup takes place between July 12 and August 6, 2021 in Sochi, Russia. The prize fund is $1,892,500. It is part of the world championship cycle: the top two players qualify for the 2022 FIDE Candidates Tournament. 

GM Viswanathan Anand will be a daily special guest commentator during Chess.com’s broadcast of the FIDE World Cup. You can keep up with all the World Cup action by going to our Events page. You can also watch the event’s live broadcast on Chess.com/TV or on our Twitch and YouTube channels.

Magnus Carlsen Plays

The tournament has GM Magnus Carlsen as the top seed, who starts playing in the second round. Great for the chess fans, not so great for some of the participants perhaps: Carlsen has announced that he will be playing! Just like in 2017, the world champion—a big fan of the knockout system himself—decided to participate and try to win one of the few events he hasn’t won yet.

As one of the top-50 seeds, Carlsen joins the field in the second round, starting on July 15. This second round has 128 players, which was the original format of the World Cup. For this edition, the tournament has been extended with an extra round in which 156 players will play. The 78 winners will then be joined by 50 seeded players, which means the tournament has a total of 206 participants.

Carlsen will face the winner of the match between GM Kaido Kulaots of Estonia and GM Sasa Martinovic of Croatia. Besides the world champion, we’ll be seeing GMs Fabiano Caruana,  Maxime Vachier-Lagrave,  Anish Giri,  Alexander Grischuk, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and Alireza Firouzja but also former World Cup winners GMs Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler, and Boris Gelfand.

Prodigies Get Wildcards

Besides all of the big names above, it’s going to be nice to watch the young rising stars. A number of them were invited by the FIDE President himself. Among these young players are GMs Nihal Sarin, Praggnanandhaa R., Gukesh D., and also IM Abhimanyu Mishra, who is still trying to break Karjakin’s record of becoming the youngest-ever grandmaster.

You can find the full list of participants, and how they qualified for this World Cup, in this document. The full pairings tree is available here.

Vishy Anand Star Commentator

All of the seasoned players and young talents, many of them with Indian roots, will be playing under the watchful eye of Anand. The five-time world champion will be checking in daily in the Chess.com broadcast starting from July 23.

Our show will be hosted by GM Daniel Naroditsky and IM Danny Rensch and will see more top-level guests, to be announced soon!

You can keep up with all the World Cup action by going to our Events page. You can also watch the event’s live broadcast on Chess.com/TV or on our Twitch and YouTube channels.

Women’s World Cup

For the first time, there will also be a Women’s World Cup held alongside the main event. This tournament will feature 103 of the best female players competing for a $676,250 prize fund. It also starts on July 12 but has one less round. Therefore, the final finishes on August 3.

The biggest names playing in the women’s section are GMs Kateryna Lagno, Aleksandra Goryachkina, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Mariya Muzychuk, Anna Muzychuk, Harika Dronavalli, Tan Zhongiy, Valentina Gunina, Nana Dzgagnidze, Anna Ushenina, and Antoaneta Stefanova.

Three days per round

The format of the FIDE World Cup is two standard (classical) games and in the case of a 1-1 tie, a tiebreak on the third day. Unlike in previous editions, the final will also see only two standard games and not four. A tiebreak can go up to seven games: two 25|10, two 10|10, two 5|3, and an armageddon game where White gets five minutes and Black gets four minutes and draw odds.

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