Arjun Erigaisi signs with Gen.G Esports, Carlsen and Caruana join Team Liquid

Ding, Abdusattorov, So, MVL and Murzin join various esports organizations

From the beginning of this month, almost every other day, we are reading about top chess players signing with various esports organization. The reason is simple - Esports World Cup 2025. Chess has been included in the globally followed event, which will take place from 31st July to 3rd August 2025. Twelve players will get to take part in the EWC. Two of the first qualifiers will take place in the Champions Chess Tour. The first one, Chessable Masters starts today.

Gen.G Esports: Arjun Erigaisi

Gen.G Esports tweeted the following in their announcement:

Life's too short to make bad moves... so we made a great one ♟️

Ranked #4 in the World, he's the most interesting Chess player alive.

Welcome @ArjunErigaisi to Gen.G!

Check out the announcement by Gen.G Esports and Arjun Erigaisi's reaction to it

All Games - AG Global: Volodar Murzin

All Games - AG Global announced their signing of the newly crowned World Rapid champion - GM Volodar Murzin.

Welcoming the Rapid World Champion - to AGGlobal Esports!

The world champion, the winner - Volodar Murizin! 🌟

Team Vitality: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Team Vitality acquired World Blitz 2021 champion, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (FRA).

They tweeted:

Mercato Checkmate ♟️

Bienvenue dans la ruche @Vachier_Lagrave 💛🐝

Check out Maxime Vachier-Lagrave's take on chess as an esport.

LGD Gaming: Ding Liren

Team LGD Gaming announced on their Chinese social media Weibo about the signing of 17th World Champion, Ding Liren (CHN)

Here is the translated version of the announcement

#lgd[超话]#lgd超话

It is a pleasure to announce that chess players@丁立人chessWith the LGD e-sports club officially signed, the future with us together.

Ding Liren is a chess player in Hangzhou intellectual sports team. He has a solid foundation in chess and a delicate style of chess. In the game, he can always grasp the trend of the situation by virtue of his keen intuition and bold judgment of the overall situation! He is not only an international grandmaster, but also the 17th world chess champion in history and the only men's world champion in China!

Welcome Ding Liren contestants to become a member of this big family, I believe we will wipe out a different spark! In the future, we will go through hardships to explore a broader world! #丁立人##ewc电竞世界杯#

Team Liquid: Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana

Team Liquid announced the signing of two huge acquisitions - World no.1 Magnus Carlsen (NOR) and World no.2 Fabiano Caruana (USA).

Team Liquid tweeted the following

This week we made our grand entrance into chess with not one, but TWO of the greatest minds in Chess. This is just the beginning. We're scaling. #LetsGoLiquid Welcome to Team Liquid @FabianoCaruana & @MagnusCarlsen ♘♞

Magnus Carlsen's tweet on it

Fabiano Caruana tweeted:

Very excited to be part of @TeamLiquid and looking forward to the future!

NAVI: Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Wesley So and Oleksandr Bortnyk

NAVI signed three chess players: World Rapid 2021 champion and World no.6 - Nodirbek Abdusattorov (UZB), first Official World Fischer Random champion and World no.11 - Wesley So (USA) and World Youth Under-18 Open 2018 champion - GM Oleksandr Bortnyk (UKR).

So far we are yet to see any female player joining an esports organization. Maybe the work is still being done and we will get to hear about it soon. We can only hope this means more esports organizations will sign various chess talent all over the world, and it will not be limited to Esports World Cup 2025 only and will go beyond that.

Links

Official site: Gen.G Esports, LGD Gaming, Team Liquid, Team Vitality and Navi

Related news:

Chess is Coming to the Esports World Cup 2025 @ 21/12/2024 by ChessBase India (en)