FIDE World Team Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships 2026 to be held in Hong Kong
FIDE has announced that the fourth edition of the World Team Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships will take place in Hong Kong from 16 to 22 June 2026. The event will make its first-ever appearance in East Asia, and after beginning its journey in Düsseldorf in 2023, it has quickly grown into one of the most compelling team events on the international calendar. Unlike traditional national team competitions, this format brings together club-style lineups and star players under the same banner, offering chess fans a rare and distinctive competitive setting.
What makes this championship particularly special is the chance to see some of the world’s strongest grandmasters competing in self-assembled squads. This is something rarely seen outside the Chess Olympiad, and it creates a stage where elite-level competition meets a blend of generations and playing styles. According to the first details shared by FIDE, world number one Magnus Carlsen will be among the headline names, joined by the most recent FIDE Candidates Tournament and Women’s Candidates Tournament winners, Javokhir Sindarov and Vaishali Rameshbabu. That combination underlines the event’s role in bringing together both established stars and the rising wave of top talent.
The Rapid Championship will be played as a 12-round Swiss-system tournament over three days, with four rounds per day and a time control of 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment per move. It will be followed on 20 and 21 June by the Blitz Championship, which begins with pool stages before moving into a knockout bracket for the top 16 teams. The time control there will be 3 minutes plus a 2-second increment per move. With both rapid and blitz formats packed into the same week, squad depth and player versatility are expected to play a decisive role.
The combined €500,000 prize fund further reinforces the event’s prestige. The winning team in Rapid will receive €110,000, while the Blitz champion will take home €75,000. Registration is already well underway, and several powerful teams have confirmed their participation. Most notably, defending Blitz champions WR Chess are returning with an outstanding lineup featuring Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Wesley So, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Andrey Esipenko, Alexandra Kosteniuk, and Hou Yifan. With that level of star power gathered in one squad, Hong Kong 2026 is already shaping up to be one of the most anticipated chess events of the year.