The 46th Chess Olympiad opens today in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and for the first time in its long history the world's biggest team event heads to Central Asia. With a record field and both golds to defend, there is no shortage of story to follow over the eleven rounds ahead.
A city built for crossroads
Samarkand is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia, commonly dated to around the 8th century BC, and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2001. For centuries it flourished as a stop on the Silk Road, a meeting point for traders, scholars and armies between China, Persia and Europe. Now its modern EXPO Centre, set within the Silk Road Complex, hosts the game's leading nations. It is a fitting homecoming: a city that has always traded in ideas is hosting a game of pure position and calculation.
Record numbers
This edition is the biggest yet. FIDE's own preview counted 208 teams in the Open event and around 190 in the Women's, passing 400 team entries in total and topping Budapest 2024 by roughly twenty. All of them play the same Swiss format: eleven rounds, four players and a reserve on each team, with a single rest day after round six. The Open winners take the Hamilton-Russell Cup, the Women's winners the Vera Menchik Cup, and the best combined federation gets the Nona Gaprindashvili Trophy.
The champions return
India arrive as the defending champions in both sections, having swept to historic maiden golds in Budapest in 2024. Four of that men's side — Arjun Erigaisi, R Praggnanandhaa, D Gukesh and Vidit Gujrathi — are back, with Nihal Sarin joining them, and the women's team is seeded first under Koneru Humpy. A repeat would be remarkable; a serious challenge is expected from the United States, China and the hosts.
And the hosts carry real hopes of their own. Uzbekistan's rise has been one of modern chess's best stories — they claimed the Open title in Chennai in 2022, and in Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Javokhir Sindarov they field two players barely out of their teens with world-beating ratings. A home crowd and a home board can weigh on any opponent.
One notable absence: Magnus Carlsen sits this one out, as do Hikaru Nakamura and Alireza Firouzja.
Why it matters
Olympiads are about more than trophies. They are the closest chess comes to a national team sport, a fortnight where individual rivalries are set aside for flags, and where the depth of a federation's chess culture — not one star — decides the podium. In that sense Samarkand is the perfect stage. The city that once connected East and West now hosts the meeting of the chess world, and Uzbekistan is showing exactly how wide that world has grown.
Play begins today. We will be following the story here on EndGame all fortnight.
For more on the region's growing place in the global game, see our sister site Hermes News.