World Chess Championship 2021

Defending champion	Challenger
Magnus Carlsen	TBD
Magnus Carlsen (NOR)	TBD
Born 30 November 1990 28 years old
Winner of the World Chess Championship 2018	Winner of the Candidates Tournament 2020
Rating: TBD	Rating: TBD
← 2018	2022 →

The World Chess Championship 2020 will be a chess match between the reigning World Chess Champion, Magnus Carlsen, and a challenger to determine the World Chess Champion. It will be held in the latter half of 2020, under the auspices of FIDE, the world chess federation, with the organisation rights belonging to World Chess, its commercial partner.

Candidates Tournament

The challenger will be the winner of a Candidates Tournament, which will be an eight-player tournament played in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in March-April of 2020.

The qualifiers for the Candidates Tournament will be:

Qualification method	Player
2018 World Championship runner-up	Fabiano Caruana
The top two finishers at the 2019 World Chess Cup	Teimour Radjabov (winner)
	Ding Liren (runner-up)
The top finisher in the FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament 2019 (who does not qualify by one of the above methods, and is not Carlsen).	Wang Hao (winner)
The top two finishers in the FIDE Grand Prix 2019 (who do not qualify by one of the above methods).	In progress: ends 2019-12-24 Current leaders: Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Alexander Grischuk
Highest average rating (who does not qualify by one of the above methods, and is not Carlsen).	Current leader: Anish Giri
Wild card (chosen by organizer)	TBD

If one or more players decline the invitation to play in the Candidates Tournament, the players with the next highest average ratings will qualify.

Compared to previous cycles (2014, 2016, 2018), the Grand Swiss is a new addition, and the number of qualifiers by rating has been reduced from two to one. The format of the Grand Prix tournament has also changed.

Qualifier by rating

The qualifier on rating is the player with the highest average rating for the 12 ratings periods from February 2019 to January 2020, who does not qualify by another method. To be eligible, a player must have played at least 30 games during these 12 ratings periods, and at least 18 in the final 6 ratings periods.

The following table shows the ratings (in excess of 2700) of the players with the top average ratings from February 2019 to October 2019. It includes the first ten players except for world champion Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana (who qualifies as the 2018 challenger) and Ding Liren (who qualifies as a finalist of the 2019 World Cup). All of these players have already met the above game count requirements. The current leader for this qualification path is Anish Giri.

Player	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan 2020	Total	Average
Anish Giri	97	97	97	87	79	79	79	80	80	76			851	85.1
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	90	90	93	81	74	65	64	67	67	77			768	76.8
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	80	75	73	80	79	75	78	74	74	77			765	76.5
Ian Nepomniachtchi	71	71	73	73	75	75	74	76	76	73			737	73.7
Viswanathan Anand	79	79	74	74	67	64	56	65	65	57			680	68.0
Alexander Grischuk	71	71	71	72	75	66	59	59	59	64			667	66.7
Wesley So	65	62	62	54	54	63	76	67	67	65			635	63.5

Wild card

One wild card is selected by the organizer. This player must participate in at least two of the three qualifying tournaments (World Cup, Grand Swiss and Grand Prix) and either be the highest non-qualifier in one of them or be in the top 10 by average rating from February 2019 to January 2020.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave came third in the World Cup and participated in the Grand Prix. Kirill Alekseenko came third in the Grand Swiss and was thus the highest non-qualifier (as the runner-up, Fabiano Caruana, was already qualified). He also participated in the World Cup. These two players are thus eligible for the wild card if they do not qualify by another method.

All other players in the above table except for Viswanathan Anand took part in both the World Cup and the Grand Prix and will thus be eligible to be picked as the wild card player if they stay in the top ten by average rating and do not qualify by another path. Viswanathan Anand only participated in the Grand Swiss and thus is ineligible to be picked as the wild card player.

Eligible for wild card nomination	Player
The highest non-qualifier in the World Cup	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
The highest non-qualifier in the Grand Swiss	Kirill Alekseenko
The highest non-qualifier in the Grand Prix	TBD
The non-qualifiers in the top 10 by average rating from February 2019 to January 2020. The eligible non-qualifiers in the top 10 by average rating up to November 2019 are:	Anish Giri
	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
	Ian Nepomniachtchi
	Alexander Grischuk
	Wesley So

Championship match

Organization

The match will be a best-of-14 match, with tie breaks. This was increased from best-of-12 (in place for every world championship match since 2006), after all 12 regular games were drawn in the previous match in 2018.

Location

Bids were to be presented no later than on 1 March 2019 to World Chess, with an inspection at the proposed venues to be made between 1 July and 15 August 2019.

In 2018, Monaco and Vienna expressed intention to bid for the event, as has Saint Petersburg.

Stavanger, Norway announced a bid in March 2019, but withdrew its bid in June 2019, after Carlsen expressed reluctance to play the match in Norway.