Global Chess League 2026

Dates and venue

Season

Season 4, the fourth edition

Dates

5 to 13 September 2026

Venue

The Lalit Ashok, Bengaluru, India

Teams

Six franchises, six boards each

Format

Rapid, 20 minutes with a 2-second increment from move 41

Organisers

Tech Mahindra with FIDE

The league, widely shortened to GCL, opens on 5 September. The 30 round-robin matches run from 5 to 12 September and the final is on 13 September. It is the first season played in Bengaluru: the three before it were held in Dubai in 2023, London in 2024 and Mumbai in 2025. Viswanathan Anand is the league ambassador and plays board one for the PBG Alaskan Knights. Two days after the final, the 46th Chess Olympiad opens in Samarkand.

The six teams

Every squad has the same shape: one Icon, two Superstar men, two Superstar women and one Prodigy. Men and women play for the same team and their results count the same, which is the thing that most separates this league from every other team event in chess.

Champions, 2025

Alpine APL Pipers

Board one: Magnus Carlsen

Champions, 2023 and 2024

Triveni Continental Kings

Board one: Alireza Firouzja

Fourth, 2024

FYERS American Gambits

Board one: Javokhir Sindarov

No final yet

Ganges Grandmasters

Board one: Ian Nepomniachtchi

Runners-up, 2024

PBG Alaskan Knights

Board one: Viswanathan Anand

Runners-up, 2023

CheQ Mumba Masters

Board one: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Two teams changed name between seasons. The champions played 2025 as the Alpine SG Pipers and are now the Alpine APL Pipers; the Mumba Masters, previously the upGrad Mumba Masters, play Season 4 as the CheQ Mumba Masters. Full squads, board by board, are on the teams and squads page. Zapp Chess is an official partner of the FYERS American Gambits for this season. The Gambits' board one, Javokhir Sindarov, plays Gukesh in the World Chess Championship 2026 in Geneva in November.

Format and scoring

Six boards play at once in each match, and the game points are deliberately lopsided:

That single rule is the league's signature, and it changes how the games are played. Black is normally the side that settles for a draw; here the extra point makes pressing with Black worth the risk, so the games are sharper than the rating gaps suggest.

On top of the game points come match points, awarded in previous seasons as 3 for a match win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss. The round-robin table is ordered on match points, and the top two teams meet in the final. The time control is rapid: 20 minutes for the whole game, with a 2-second increment per move that only begins after move 40, so the first forty moves are played on a fixed budget.

Play a position from a GCL final

This is the 2025 final in Mumbai, on the board that decided the match. Anish Giri has White against Wei Yi. Wei Yi has just played 17...h6, attacking the white queen on g5 and expecting it to move. Giri had something better.

Points table

No games have been played yet, so there is no 2026 table. When play starts on 5 September the standings are ordered on match points, with game points as the tiebreak, which is why a team can lose a match narrowly and still climb: the four boards it drew still paid. Live standings during the league are published on the official site. For reference, this is how the previous three seasons finished at the top:

Schedule

Thirty matches over eight days, then the final. It is a double round robin: every team plays every other team twice, ten matches each, and the top two of the table meet on 13 September. All times are IST.

How to watch, and tickets

• —Official stream: the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League YouTube channel. Broadcast partners for 2026 had not been announced as of 27 August 2026.
• —What carried it last year: in 2025 the matches ran on the Chess.com YouTube and Twitch channels, with Hindi commentary on Chess.com India.
• —In the hall: tickets are on BookMyShow from Rs 349 for one match plus the Festival Arena, and Rs 2,999 for a Premium ticket covering every match that day.

Tickets went on sale on 19 August 2026. Early Bird entry starts at Rs 349 and covers one match plus the Festival Arena; the Premium ticket at Rs 2,999 covers every match played that day, the Festival Arena and the Premium Lounge. The Festival Arena is the area outside the playing hall: live screenings, commentary, food and fan activities, and it has been first come, first served in previous seasons. Play itself is at The Lalit Ashok in Bengaluru. The league also runs an official app for Android and iOS with squads and results.

Global Chess League 2026 FAQ