Prague Chess Festival

Prague Chess Festival 2027: dates, schedule and players

Dates

16 to 26 February 2027

Venue

Hotel Don Giovanni, Prague

Edition

Ninth; the first was in 2019

Main events

Masters and Challengers, 10 players each

Round start

15:00 Prague, 7:30 PM IST; round 9 at 11:00, 3:30 PM IST

Rest day

22 February, for the Masters, Challengers and Futures

Entry deadline

2 February 2027 for the open and rating groups; 13 EUR more after that

Promoted from 2026

Václav Finěk (Masters), Krishnan Sasikiran (Challengers)

2026 winners

Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Václav Finěk

The official 2027 regulations give 16 to 26 February 2027 for the ninth edition, at Hotel Don Giovanni in Prague 3. The opening ceremony is on Tuesday 16 February at 19:00. The Masters, the Challengers and the Futures play 9 rounds from 17 to 26 February, with a rest day on Monday 22 February, and the closing ceremony is on 26 February at 18:00.

The open and the rating groups for players rated under 2000 play 9 rounds from 18 to 26 February, one round a day. Their rounds also start at 15:00, and round 9 starts at 11:00.

The organisers had not published a 2027 player list by 3 October 2026: the official site still showed every place in the Masters, the Challengers and the Futures as not yet announced. Two places follow from the promotion rule of the festival. Václav Finěk of the Czech Republic won the 2026 Challengers and moves up to the 2027 Masters. Krishnan Sasikiran of India won the 2026 Karel Janeček Open with 8/9 and moves up to the 2027 Challengers, the organiser's closing report says.

The rest of the field usually arrives in stages. For 2026, the organisers published the dates and opened registration for the open events on 23 September 2025. They named the first Challengers players on 17 December 2025 and the first Masters player, D Gukesh, on 8 January 2026. The final Masters line-up came on 21 February 2026, 3 days before the opening ceremony, when Hans Niemann replaced Thai Dai Van Nguyen, the Czech number 1, who withdrew one week before the start.

How the Prague Masters works

The Masters is a single round robin: each of the 10 players meets the other 9 once, over 9 rounds. A win scores 1 point, a draw half a point and a loss 0. The Challengers uses the same format one level below. The time control in both events is 90 minutes for 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with 30 seconds added per move from move 1.

Players on equal points are ranked by the result of their game against each other, then by the Sonneborn-Berger score, then by the number of wins, as the Chess-Results tables of the 2026 events show. The Sonneborn-Berger score adds up the scores of the opponents a player beat and half the scores of the opponents the player drew. A tie for first has gone to a playoff: Alireza Firouzja beat Vidit Gujrathi 2-0 in the 2020 Masters playoff, and Nodirbek Yakubboev won the 2025 Challengers after a playoff.

The festival has a promotion ladder. The winner of the open gets a place in the next Challengers, and the winner of the Challengers gets a place in the next Masters. Yakubboev took that route: he won the 2025 Challengers and scored 4.5/9 in the 2026 Masters. The Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, played each January, has the same rule between its Challengers and Masters. Under the 2027 regulations, the Futures winner also gets a place in the 2028 open.

The Masters counts for the FIDE Circuit, the ranking over 2026 and 2027 that sends 2 players to the 2028 Candidates Tournament. FIDE gave Abdusattorov 23.14 Circuit points for his 2026 win.

In 2026, the opening ceremony was on 24 February. The 9 rounds ran from 25 February to 6 March, with a rest day on 2 March. Rounds 1 to 8 started at 15:00 in Prague, which is 7:30 PM in India, and the last round started at 11:00, which is 3:30 PM in India.

Masters, Challengers, Futures and the open events

The 2027 open has no age or rating limit. The 2026 open, the Karel Janeček Open, drew a record 354 players from 51 countries. The side events include a problem-solving contest, Fischer random, Basque chess, pair blitz and bughouse. Players enter the 2027 rapid, blitz and variant events on the day of each event; the regulations do not allow registration in advance.

Prague open 2027: entry fees and registration

The 2027 open is a 9-round Swiss from 18 to 26 February. The time control is 90 minutes for 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with 30 seconds added per move from move 1. The winner gets a place in the 2028 Challengers. The entry fee depends on the FIDE rating of the player and on whether the player books the hotel through the organiser, and it includes the FIDE rating fee.

Players enter the open and the rating groups on the official registration page by 2 February 2027. Players who register after that date pay 13 EUR more. The organiser collects the fees at registration, in cash in euros or Czech crowns, or by card. A rating group costs 81 EUR with a hotel booked through the organiser and 123.5 EUR without, plus a 40 EUR cash deposit that is paid back to players who play all 9 rounds.

Prague Masters 2026 final standings

Nodirbek Abdusattorov won with 6/9, one point clear, and he was the only player in the Masters who did not lose a game, FIDE reported. He had also won in 2024, and the organisers say that no player had won the Masters twice before. He gained 9 rating points in Prague.

Parham Maghsoodloo, Aravindh Chithambaram and Jorden van Foreest finished on 5/9 and were ranked in that order on tiebreaks. Aravindh, the 2025 champion, gained 6.4 rating points. Vincent Keymer, the highest-rated player in the field, finished seventh with 4/9 and lost 13.9 rating points, according to chess.com.

D Gukesh played as the world champion and finished ninth with 3.5/9. He defends his title against Javokhir Sindarov in Geneva, with game 1 on 24 November 2026. Hans Niemann, the late replacement for Thai Dai Van Nguyen, scored 4/9.

Prague Chess Festival 2026 results: Challengers and open events

Václav Finěk of the Czech Republic won the Challengers with 6.5/9, half a point ahead of Daniil Yuffa, and did not lose a game. The result gave him his final grandmaster norm, according to chess.com, and a place in the 2027 Masters. All 5 games of the last round were decisive. Finěk had played the Futures section in 2020, where he scored 6 points.

India's Divya Deshmukh finished third with 5/9, and Surya Shekhar Ganguly was eighth with 4/9. In the other sections, Kaja Rządkowska of Poland won the Futures with 7/9, and Krishnan Sasikiran of India won the Karel Janeček Open with 8/9. Sarbartho Mani of India won the blitz tournament with 10/11, and Martin Šmajzr won the solving contest, the closing report says.

Prague Masters winners since 2019

Nodirbek Abdusattorov is the only player with 2 Masters titles. The highest winning score in the Masters is 6.5/9, by Pentala Harikrishna in 2022 and Abdusattorov in 2024. Alireza Firouzja won in 2020 at 16, after he tied with Vidit Gujrathi on 5/9 and won the playoff.

The 2021 Masters had 8 players and 7 rounds, and no Challengers was played that year. Several Challengers winners have moved up since: Jorden van Foreest played the 2021 Masters, Vincent Keymer the 2023 Masters and Nodirbek Yakubboev the 2026 Masters.

Indian players at the Prague Chess Festival

India has 2 Masters champions. Pentala Harikrishna won in 2022 with 6.5/9, and Aravindh Chithambaram won in 2025 with 6/9. Vidit Gujrathi came close in 2020, when he tied for first and lost the playoff to Firouzja.

D Gukesh has played the Masters twice, in 2024 and 2026, and R Praggnanandhaa scored 5/9 in both 2024 and 2025. In the Challengers, Divya Deshmukh went from 3/9 in 2025 to third place with 5/9 in 2026. Krishnan Sasikiran, who played the 2022 Challengers, returns to it in 2027 as the winner of the 2026 Open.

How to watch the Prague Masters

In 2026, the official site had a live games page that linked to Lichess and chess.com. Lichess showed the Masters, the Challengers, the Futures and the Karel Janeček Open move by move. A video broadcast with commentary, hosted by GM Alojzije Jankovic and WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili, ran on YouTube, according to chess.com.

Prague is 4 hours 30 minutes behind India in February. In 2027, rounds 1 to 8 start at 15:00 in Prague, which is 7:30 PM in India, and round 9 on 26 February starts at 11:00, which is 3:30 PM in India. The 2026 rounds started at the same times.

Visitors can also watch in person. In 2026, entry to the playing hall and the commentary studios was free. The venue, Hotel Don Giovanni, is at Vinohradská 2733/157a in Prague 3, near Želivského.

Prague Chess Festival FAQ

The 2027 dates, schedule, entry fees and registration details were checked on 3 October 2026 against the official 2027 regulations and the official festival site. The other facts were checked on 24 September 2026 against the Chess-Results tables of the 2026 Masters and Challengers, FIDE reports and news from chess.com and ChessBase.