Elite chess tour
Grand Chess Tour
The 2027 schedule from Bucharest to the Finals in São Paulo, how tour points and the Finals work, and the 2026 results and final standings.
The Grand Chess Tour (GCT) is a season of elite chess events, in classical and in rapid and blitz, that ends with a Finals for its top 4 players. R Praggnanandhaa of India won the 2026 tour: he led the standings, then won the Finals in Saint Louis by beating Fabiano Caruana 15-13 in the final. The 2027 season has 5 events and the Finals, from Bucharest in April to São Paulo, Brazil, where the Finals run from 26 September to 4 October 2027.
Grand Chess Tour 2027 schedule
- Season
- 16 April to 4 October 2027, travel days included
- Events
- 2 classical, 3 rapid and blitz, then the Finals
- First event
- Super Chess Classic Romania, Bucharest
- Finals
- São Paulo, Brazil, 26 September to 4 October
- Invited so far
- R Praggnanandhaa, Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So
- 2026 champion
- R Praggnanandhaa
| Event | City | Dates (2027) | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super Chess Classic Romania | Bucharest, Romania | 16 to 28 April | Classical |
| Super Rapid & Blitz Poland | Warsaw, Poland | 3 to 10 May | Rapid and blitz |
| Super Rapid & Blitz Croatia | Zagreb, Croatia | 28 June to 5 July | Rapid and blitz |
| Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz | Saint Louis, USA | 7 to 15 August | Rapid and blitz |
| Sinquefield Cup | Saint Louis, USA | 13 to 27 August | Classical |
| Grand Chess Tour Finals | São Paulo, Brazil | 26 September to 4 October | Not announced |
The organisers announced the 2027 schedule on 28 August 2026, in the news release that named the 2026 champion. The dates include the arrival and departure days, so the games start later: in 2026, play at each of the 5 regular events began 2 days after the first listed date.
The season starts earlier than in 2026. Bucharest moves from May to April and opens the tour, and Warsaw follows in May. Zagreb keeps its place at the turn of June and July, and Saint Louis again hosts its rapid and blitz event and the Sinquefield Cup back to back in August. The Finals return to São Paulo, which hosted them in 2025 in the same window. In 2026 the Finals followed the Sinquefield Cup straight away in Saint Louis; in 2027 there is a month between them.
Only 3 players have invitations so far: Praggnanandhaa, Caruana and Wesley So, who earned them as the top 3 of the 2026 Finals. As of 25 September 2026, the organisers had not named the other players, the prize funds or the rules of the 2027 Finals. They named the full-tour players on 2 April 2024, 26 February 2025 and 27 January 2026, so the 2027 list may come early in 2027.
The release of 28 August also named a new executive director for the tour: GM Alex Onischuk takes over from Michael Khodarkovsky, who retires after 11 years in the role.
The year 2027 also brings the first full season of the Total Chess World Championship Tour, a circuit that the organiser of Norway Chess runs with FIDE approval. It starts in March 2027 with 4 city events, after a pilot in Budapest from 10 to 20 November 2026. Its 2027 dates and cities had not been published by 25 September 2026, so any clash with the Grand Chess Tour is not known yet.
What is the Grand Chess Tour?
In the words of its organisers, the Grand Chess Tour is a circuit of international events for the world's best players. Garry Kasparov inspired it. It began in 2015 as an affiliation of the Saint Louis Chess Club, Tower AS and Chess Promotions Ltd, with 3 events that year: Norway Chess in Stavanger, the Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis and the London Chess Classic.
Today it is a season of 5 events in Europe and the United States, plus the Finals. Two are classical events, with long games: the Super Chess Classic Romania in Bucharest and the Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis. Three are rapid and blitz events, with faster games, in Warsaw, Zagreb and Saint Louis. The Bucharest and Warsaw events carried the Superbet name until 2025.
The Super Foundation and the Saint Louis Chess Club were the major sponsors of the 2026 tour and provided its prize fund of 2 million US dollars. The Saint Louis Chess Club also broadcast every 2026 event.
How the Grand Chess Tour works
Each season has a group of full-tour players, who play both classical events and 2 of the 3 rapid and blitz events. There were 9 of them in 2025 and at the start of 2026. Wildcards, players invited to a single event, fill the other places in each 10-player field.
Full-tour players earn tour points by their place in each event. Table 2 shows the scale from the 2025 regulations; no 2026 version was found online, and Liquipedia lists the same scale for 2026. A player who wins an event outright, without a playoff, earns 13 points instead of 12. Tied players share the points of their places, and a playoff does not change them. Wildcards count in the event ranking but earn no tour points.
| Place | Tour points |
|---|---|
| 1st | 12, or 13 for a win without a playoff |
| 2nd | 10 |
| 3rd | 8 |
| 4th | 7 |
| 5th | 6 |
| 6th | 5 |
| 7th | 4 |
| 8th | 3 |
| 9th | 2 |
| 10th | 1 |
After the last regular event, the Sinquefield Cup, the 4 full-tour players with the most points go to the Finals. The top 3 of the Finals are invited to the next season.
The classical events are 10-player round robins of 9 rounds, so each player meets every other player once. Players get 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 30 minutes more, with 30 seconds added per move from move 1.
The rapid and blitz events have 9 rapid rounds, then 18 blitz rounds, over 5 days. Rapid games are 25 minutes plus 10 seconds per move, and blitz games 5 minutes plus 2 seconds. Rapid games count double: a rapid win scores 2 points and a draw 1, and a blitz win scores 1 point and a draw half a point. The best possible total is 36 points.
Grand Chess Tour Finals
The GCT Finals decide the tour champion. In 2026, the top 4 on tour points, Praggnanandhaa, So, Caruana and Vincent Keymer, met in knockout matches at the Saint Louis Chess Club from 22 to 27 August: 2 semifinals, then a final and a match for third place.
Each match had 2 classical games, 2 rapid games and 4 blitz games, and every game was played even when the match was already decided. Each game gave match points: 6 for a classical win and 3 for a draw, 4 for a rapid win and 2 for a draw, and 2 for a blitz win and 1 for a draw. That adds up to 28 points, so 15 points won a match.
If both classical games were drawn, the players also played a Blitz Bonus Match. According to ChessBase, they played blitz games with alternating colours until one player won a game, and that win was worth 2 points. A match with a bonus game was scored out of 30, which explains the two 18-12 results. A match still tied after all its games went to a playoff.
| Match | Winner | Score | Loser |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semifinal 1 | R Praggnanandhaa | 19-9 | Vincent Keymer |
| Semifinal 2 | Fabiano Caruana | 18-12 | Wesley So |
| Final | R Praggnanandhaa | 15-13 | Fabiano Caruana |
| Third place | Wesley So | 18-12 | Vincent Keymer |
Praggnanandhaa beat Keymer 19-9 in his semifinal and Caruana 15-13 in the final. "It's a huge honor to win a tournament like this," he said after the final. He won 200,000 US dollars, Caruana 125,000, So 75,000 for third place and Keymer 50,000.
The Finals are not held every season. London hosted them in 2018 and 2019, the 2021 to 2024 seasons ended with the Sinquefield Cup, and the Finals came back in São Paulo in 2025. There, Caruana beat Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 15-13 in the final, and Levon Aronian beat Praggnanandhaa 20-8 for third place.
Grand Chess Tour 2026 results
The 2026 season ran from May to August: 5 events and the Finals, with a prize fund of 2 million US dollars. Five players won the 6 events, and only Praggnanandhaa won 2: the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz, his first rapid and blitz title on the tour, and the Finals.
| Event | Where and when | Prize fund (USD) | Winner | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Super Rapid & Blitz Poland | Warsaw, 5 to 9 May | 200,000 | Hans Niemann | 22.5 points; Fabiano Caruana second with 22 |
| Super Chess Classic Romania | Bucharest, 14 to 23 May | 475,000 | Vincent Keymer | 6/9; Caruana second with 5.5 |
| Super Rapid & Blitz Croatia | Zagreb, 1 to 5 July | 200,000 | Alireza Firouzja | Won an Armageddon game against Nodirbek Abdusattorov after both scored 23.5 |
| Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz | Saint Louis, 2 to 6 August | 200,000 | R Praggnanandhaa | 23.5 points; Javokhir Sindarov second with 22 |
| Sinquefield Cup | Saint Louis, 10 to 19 August | 475,000 | Wesley So | Won the playoff after he and Praggnanandhaa scored 5.5/9 |
| Grand Chess Tour Finals | Saint Louis, 22 to 27 August | 450,000 | R Praggnanandhaa | Beat Caruana 15-13 in the final |
Hans Niemann, a wildcard, won the first event in Warsaw with 22.5 points, half a point ahead of Caruana. Vincent Keymer won the classical event in Bucharest with 6/9, again half a point ahead of Caruana. In Zagreb, Alireza Firouzja and Nodirbek Abdusattorov tied on 23.5, and Firouzja won an Armageddon game, a single deciding game, to take the title: the first GCT event ever decided that way.
In Saint Louis, Praggnanandhaa won the rapid and blitz event with 23.5 points, 1.5 ahead of Javokhir Sindarov. At the Sinquefield Cup, he and Wesley So both scored 5.5/9, and So won the playoff.
The field changed several times. World champion D Gukesh, who plays Sindarov for the title in Geneva, left the full tour on 31 March to "skip long events away from home" and train. Sindarov, the World Cup champion, took his full-tour place, and Gukesh played only the Warsaw and Zagreb events, as a wildcard. Levon Aronian withdrew for health reasons in April and Jorden van Foreest replaced him; Aronian later came back as a wildcard in Saint Louis.
Firouzja left the Bucharest event with an ankle injury in May. On 27 July he withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup and the rest of the tour, citing a scheduling conflict and his decision to play another event. The organisers declared all his 2026 tour points null and void, and Samuel Sevian took his place in the Sinquefield Cup. Firouzja played the chess event of the Esports World Cup in Paris, whose main event ran from 11 to 15 August, inside the Sinquefield Cup dates of 8 to 21 August.
That clash had been public since February. On 10 February, 7 tour players, Vachier-Lagrave, Aronian, Caruana, Firouzja, Keymer, Praggnanandhaa and Anish Giri, signed an open letter about it. The tour replied that it had announced its August dates on 3 October 2025, and that the Esports World Cup dates came out in January 2026.
Grand Chess Tour 2026 final standings
Praggnanandhaa led the regular season with 35.5 tour points, 1 ahead of So, and went into the Finals as the top seed; So was the second seed, Caruana third and Keymer fourth. Sindarov missed the Finals by half a point. In the final standings, places 1 to 4 follow the Finals, so Caruana, the runner-up, is second overall with fewer tour points than So.
| Place | Player | Tour points | Prize money (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | R Praggnanandhaa | 35.5 | 404,354 |
| 2 | Fabiano Caruana | 29.5 | 297,958 |
| 3 | Wesley So | 34.5 | 280,625 |
| 4 | Vincent Keymer | 28.5 | 270,187 |
| 5 | Javokhir Sindarov | 28 | 170,458 |
| 6 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 19 | 89,729 |
| 7 | Anish Giri | 13 | 67,229 |
| 8 | Jorden van Foreest | 12 | 58,416 |
Eight full-tour players finished the season. Firouzja started it as a full-tour player, but his points were voided when he left in July.
Grand Chess Tour prize money
The 2026 tour paid 2 million US dollars in total. Each rapid and blitz event had 200,000 US dollars. Each classical event had 475,000: a base fund of 350,000 plus a bonus of 125,000. The Finals had 450,000.
At the Finals, the champion won 200,000 US dollars, second place 125,000, third 75,000 and fourth 50,000. Over the whole season, Praggnanandhaa earned 404,354 US dollars, Caruana 297,958 and So 280,625.
The Finals fund grew from 350,000 US dollars in 2025 to 450,000 in 2026. As of 25 September 2026, the 2027 prize funds were not announced.
Indian players on the Grand Chess Tour
R Praggnanandhaa is the first Indian to win the Grand Chess Tour, and the September 2026 rating list made him India's No. 1. He won his first tour event at the 2025 Superbet Chess Classic Romania after a playoff, and finished fourth at the 2025 Finals. In 2026 he won the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz, the Finals and the overall title, and he has an invitation to the 2027 tour.
D Gukesh was a full-tour player in 2024 and 2025. In 2026 he left the full tour and played the Warsaw and Zagreb events as a wildcard, finishing sixth in both. Arjun Erigaisi made his tour debut as a wildcard in Warsaw in 2024 and finished fifth with 18 points, and Aravindh Chithambaram tied for seventh there in 2025 with 17.
India has hosted one tour event: the Tata Steel Chess India Rapid & Blitz in Kolkata in 2019, where Viswanathan Anand, Pentala Harikrishna and Vidit Gujrathi played. Anand was also one of the players invited to the first season in 2015.
How to watch the Grand Chess Tour
The Saint Louis Chess Club streamed every 2026 event live on its YouTube and Twitch channels, with commentary led by GM Yasser Seirawan. Chess.com had a live games page for each event, like its 2026 Finals page. For viewers in India, the 2026 start times were:
- Saint Louis: 12 PM local time (CDT), which is 10:30 PM IST, for the rapid and blitz event, the Sinquefield Cup and the Finals.
- Bucharest: 15:00 CEST, which is 6:30 PM IST, for rounds 1 to 8, and 4:30 PM IST for round 9.
- Zagreb: 15:00 CEST, which is 6:30 PM IST, and 5:30 PM IST on the last day.
- Warsaw: 12:00 CEST on the last day, which is 3:30 PM IST.
The 2027 round times were not announced by 25 September 2026. São Paulo, the 2027 Finals city, is 8 hours 30 minutes behind India.
In Saint Louis, fans could buy day passes from the Saint Louis Chess Club, with standing room in the playing hall, live grandmaster commentary, and free food and drinks. You can replay any position from the games on the analysis board.
Grand Chess Tour winners since 2015
The tour has had 11 seasons since 2015; the 2020 season was cancelled because of COVID-19. Magnus Carlsen, Wesley So, Alireza Firouzja and Fabiano Caruana have won twice each, and Carlsen played no 2026 event.
| Year | Champion | Where the title was decided |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Magnus Carlsen | London Chess Classic |
| 2016 | Wesley So | London Chess Classic |
| 2017 | Magnus Carlsen | London Chess Classic |
| 2018 | Hikaru Nakamura | Finals in London, against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave |
| 2019 | Ding Liren | Finals in London, against Vachier-Lagrave |
| 2020 | None | Season cancelled because of COVID-19 |
| 2021 | Wesley So | Sinquefield Cup, Saint Louis |
| 2022 | Alireza Firouzja | Sinquefield Cup, Saint Louis |
| 2023 | Fabiano Caruana | Sinquefield Cup, Saint Louis |
| 2024 | Alireza Firouzja | Sinquefield Cup, Saint Louis |
| 2025 | Fabiano Caruana | Finals in São Paulo, 15-13 against Vachier-Lagrave |
| 2026 | R Praggnanandhaa | Finals in Saint Louis, 15-13 against Caruana |
Ding Liren won the 2019 Finals in London, and Firouzja took the 2024 title by winning the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz and the Sinquefield Cup back to back.
The events have changed over the years, and only the Sinquefield Cup has been on the tour in every season. Norway Chess was a tour event only in 2015, and the London Chess Classic from 2015 to 2018; it is not part of the 2026 tour. Paris hosted events from 2016 to 2019 and in 2021, Leuven from 2016 to 2018, and Côte d'Ivoire and Kolkata in 2019. Bucharest and Zagreb joined in 2019, and Warsaw in 2022.
Grand Chess Tour FAQ
What is the Grand Chess Tour?
The Grand Chess Tour (GCT) is a season of elite chess events, in classical and in rapid and blitz, for the world's best players. It began in 2015. Since 2025, each season has ended with a Finals for the top 4 players on tour points.
When does the Grand Chess Tour 2027 start?
The 2027 Grand Chess Tour starts with the Super Chess Classic Romania in Bucharest, listed from 16 to 28 April 2027. The listed dates include arrival and departure days; in 2026, play at each regular event began 2 days after the first listed date.
Where are the Grand Chess Tour Finals 2027?
In São Paulo, Brazil, from 26 September to 4 October 2027, travel days included. São Paulo also hosted the 2025 Finals in the same window, when Fabiano Caruana won the title. The 2026 Finals were played at the Saint Louis Chess Club.
Who won the Grand Chess Tour 2026?
R Praggnanandhaa of India. He led the regular season with 35.5 tour points, then won the Finals in Saint Louis: he beat Vincent Keymer 19-9 in the semifinal and Fabiano Caruana 15-13 in the final. He earned 404,354 US dollars over the season.
Who has won the Grand Chess Tour?
Seven players in 11 seasons since 2015: Magnus Carlsen, Wesley So, Alireza Firouzja and Fabiano Caruana twice each, and Hikaru Nakamura, Ding Liren and R Praggnanandhaa once. The 2020 season was cancelled because of COVID-19. Carlsen played no 2026 event.
Who plays in the Grand Chess Tour 2027?
As of 25 September 2026, only 3 players have invitations: R Praggnanandhaa, Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So, the top 3 of the 2026 Finals. The organisers named the full-tour players on 27 January in 2026, 26 February in 2025 and 2 April in 2024.
How do players qualify for the Grand Chess Tour Finals?
Through tour points. Full-tour players earn points by their place in each event, from 12 or 13 for first to 1 for tenth, and the 4 players with the most points after the regular season play the Finals. Wildcards earn no tour points.
How much prize money does the Grand Chess Tour pay?
The 2026 tour paid 2 million US dollars: 200,000 for each rapid and blitz event, 475,000 for each classical event and 450,000 for the Finals, where the champion won 200,000. Praggnanandhaa earned the most, 404,354. The 2027 prize funds are not announced yet.
How are Grand Chess Tour Finals matches scored?
Each match has 2 classical, 2 rapid and 4 blitz games. A classical win scores 6 points and a draw 3, a rapid win 4 and a draw 2, a blitz win 2 and a draw 1. That makes 28 points, so 15 wins a match. A blitz bonus match adds 2 points when both classical games are drawn.
Is the London Chess Classic part of the Grand Chess Tour?
No. The London Chess Classic was a tour event from 2015 to 2018, and London hosted the Finals in 2019. The 2026 tour ran in Poland, Romania, Croatia and the United States, and the 2027 tour adds the Finals in São Paulo, Brazil.
Why did the Sinquefield Cup clash with the Esports World Cup?
In 2026, the main chess event of the Esports World Cup, from 11 to 15 August, fell inside the Sinquefield Cup dates, 8 to 21 August. The Grand Chess Tour said it had announced its dates on 3 October 2025, and the Esports World Cup dates came in January 2026.
Where can I watch the Grand Chess Tour?
The Saint Louis Chess Club streamed every 2026 event live on YouTube and Twitch, with commentary led by Yasser Seirawan, and Chess.com showed the live games. In 2026, rounds in Saint Louis started at 10:30 PM IST, and most rounds in Bucharest and Zagreb at 6:30 PM IST.
Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026 against the Grand Chess Tour news releases and event pages, the 2026 standings, the 2025 Grand Chess Tour regulations, reports by FIDE, Chess.com, ChessBase, the European Chess Union and US Chess, the Saint Louis Chess Club, and Liquipedia.
