Global Chess League 2026 Format and Scoring

Teams

Six franchises of six players

Squad

One Icon, two Superstar men, two Superstar women, one Prodigy

League

Double round robin: 30 matches, ten per team

Final

Top two of the table, 13 September

Time control

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

Prize fund

$1,000,000

Game points and match points

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

That single rule 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. Men and women play on the same team and their boards count the same.

On top of the game points come match points: 3 for a match win, 1 for a tied match and 0 for a loss. The points table is ordered on match points, with game points as the tiebreak, and the top two teams meet in the final.

Time control

The games are rapid: 20 minutes for the whole game, with a 2-second increment per move that only begins after move 40. The first forty moves are played on a fixed budget, which is why time trouble decides so many boards in the league.

Prize money

The prize fund is $1,000,000. $500,000 is paid on final standings, $450,000 is divided between the teams in proportion to their share of all game points scored in the league, and the champions take an extra $50,000. Every board result pays, even in a lost match.

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.