The Total Chess World Championship Tour Pilot will be played from 10 to 20 November 2026 at the Anantara New York Palace Hotel in Budapest, Hungary. The 24-player field is now complete, and India has three players in it: R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi and Vaishali Rameshbabu.
Format: The pilot brings together Fast Classic, Rapid and Blitz in a single championship. Its group stage has the 24 players in four groups of six. Each group plays a double round-robin over five days, which means ten Fast Classic games per player (45 minutes plus a 30-second increment), with 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw. A nine-round Blitz Swiss held before the competition decides tie-break rankings.
Participants: Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Vincent Keymer, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Anish Giri, Alireza Firouzja, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Liem Le, Richard Rapport, Levon Aronian, Hans Niemann, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Jorden van Foreest, Haik Martirosyan, Vladislav Artemiev, Abhimanyu Mishra, Andrew Hong, Bibisara Assaubayeva and Vaishali Rameshbabu.
The Budapest pilot comes ahead of the first full Total Chess World Championship Tour season in 2027.
