10/23/2026 – In the end, Wesley So did it! Following his bitter defeat to Sam Sevian in the final round of the 2026 US Championship - which ended his 48-game unbeaten run at the event - he defeated Fabiano Caruana 1½–½ in the rapid playoff for the title. It was a thrilling encounter, not without mistakes, but full of interesting moments. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Saint Louis Chess Club

10/23/2026 – Going into the final round of the 2026 US Women’s Championship in St Louis, Rachael Li was the sole leader with 8 points from 10 games, one point ahead of Alice Lee. Li therefore needed only a draw against Anna Zatonskih in the final round to win the tournament. Li secured both the draw and the title, becoming US Women's Champion at just 16 years of age. She also collected $45,000 in prize money, qualified for the next Women's World Cup and earned her first IM norm. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Saint Louis Chess Club

10/22/2026 – Wesley So had gone 48 consecutive games unbeaten at the US Championships, but his run came to an end in the final round of the 2026 edition: playing black, he lost to bottom-of-the-table Samuel Sevian, who had failed to win a single game in the previous ten rounds. As a result, the 2026 US Championship will be decided in a tiebreak, as Fabiano Caruana, who had trailed So by one point going into the round, secured a must-win victory against Awonder Liang. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Saint Louis Chess Club

10/19/2026 – A total of 108 teams are competing in the European Club Cup in Budva in the open section, with 22 in the women's competition. On paper, the favourites in the open are Bayegan Pendik Chess Sports Club from Turkey, with an average Elo rating of 2715. Bayegan are also the only team with an average rating of 2700 or higher, although four other teams - Alkaloid, SuperChess Romania, Novy Bor and Tuxena - have averages of at least 2600. These five teams are also among the 25 in Budva that have won both their matches in the first two rounds. | Pictured: Alkaloid's Wei Yi | Photo: Gerd Densing

10/8/2026 – How can I improve at chess, increase my Elo rating or become an International Master or Grandmaster? Or, more generally, how can I become an expert in any field? The YouTube channel Veritasium provides some answers. | Photo: Screenshot from the Veritasium video. Here, Veritasium quotes from the video Magnus Carlsen's Mind-Blowing Memory, published by Chess24

10/7/2026 – Two Olympiads, thirteen wins, seven draws, no defeats, two individual gold medals and a team bronze - Frederik Svane's Olympiad record is impressive. At the 2026 Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, he also set a low-key record: never before had a German player won two Olympiad gold medals for the best performance on his board. | Photo: Nils Rohde

9/21/2026 – In April, 24-year-old Egon Mattaaq, who lives in Innaarsuit in northwestern Greenland, won the country's first official national championship. Ten players took part, and Mattaaq won with 6 out of 7. Because of the great distances within the country, the tournament was played online. In Samarkand, Greenland is taking part in a Chess Olympiad for the first time, and for Mattaaq it is also the first tournament in which he is playing over the board against real-life opponents. Arne Kähler spoke to him during the Olympiad.

9/11/2026 – Six teams, 36 world-class players, 20 minutes for the entire game, an increment only from move 40, 4 points for a win with Black, 3 for a win with White, 1 for a draw, 18 to 24 games per day, and a prize fund of $1 million – the Global Chess League is a chess spectacle. And it is heading for an exciting finish: the top two teams in the preliminary stage qualify for the final, and after eight of ten team matches, three teams are tied for the lead. | Photo: In one of the day's many top-level encounters, Magnus Carlsen defeated Vishy Anand | Photo: Global Chess League

9/8/2026 – The Alpine APL Pipers, with Magnus Carlsen on the icon board, took sole lead in the standings on day three of the Global Chess League in Bengaluru. In their first match of the day, Carlsen beat Viswanathan Anand on time (pictured), but the Pipers nevertheless lost to the PBG Alaskan Knights. Carlsen's team then bounced back with a 15-3 victory over the previously leading FYERS American Gambits. After four of ten matches, the Pipers lead the table with nine match points, followed by four teams on six. | Photos: Global Chess League

8/21/2026 – The Evans Gambit is one of the most famous gambits in chess history. It is named after William Davies Evans (1790–1872), a Welsh sea captain who, in the 1820s, came up with the idea of offering a pawn with 4.b4!? after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5. If Black accepts the sacrifice, White gains time to develop their pieces and attack the black king. The leading players of the 19th century were enthusiastic about this concept, and chess legends such as Paul Morphy and Adolf Anderssen played numerous spectacular games with the Evans Gambit. But what have modern world champions thought of the Evans Gambit? | Photo: Captain Evans (source: Wikipedia)

7/14/2026 – "Enjoy the best game. Ever." This bold slogan is the motto of New in Chess Magazine, and in its six annual issues, it does much to justify that claim. The second issue of 2026 offers an appealing mix of tournament reports, training articles and insights into the world of chess. At its heart, however, are moving tributes to the Dutch grandmaster and author Jan Timman, who passed away on 18 February 2026. | Photo: Jan Timman 2019 | Photo: Lennart Ootes

6/20/2026 – At the end of the 1980s, Soenke Maus, who was born on 11 June 1967 in Bad Schwartau and celebrated his 59th birthday last week, was regarded as one of Germany's greatest talents. But in 1995 he ended his chess career and became a successful marine researcher in Norway. Maus played his most famous game in 1989 at an open tournament in Lugano: he won in just 19 moves, in a theoretically important variation, against Dr Robert Hübner. | Pictured: Soenke Maus, 1994 | Photo: Torsten Szobries

5/15/2026 – In 1983, 21 years after Wolfgang Uhlmann's victory over Mikhail Botvinnik at the 1962 Chess Olympiad in Varna, a German player once again managed to defeat a reigning world champion. In the first round of the International Mephisto Chess Tournament in Hanover, Wolfram Hartmann, then a 27-year-old law student from Bamberg, achieved one of the most astonishing underdog victories in German chess history against Anatoly Karpov (pictured). | Photo: V. Savostianov, Novosti Press (via Douglas Griffin)

5/9/2026 – Winning against the reigning world champion is always difficult. The first German player to achieve this feat after the Second World War was Wolfgang Unzicker, for many years the number one player in the Federal Republic of Germany. At the 1961 European Team Championship, he outplayed the then world champion Mikhail Botvinnik. Wolfgang Uhlmann, for many years the number one player in the GDR, was not to be outdone. In 1962, at the Chess Olympiad in Varna, he defeated Botvinnik - though not quite as convincingly as Unzicker had done a year earlier. | Image: Wolfgang Uhlmann in 1970 | Photo: Rob Mieremet, Anefo

4/7/2026 – Vincent Keymer has done it! With a quick draw against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the ninth and final round of the grenke Freestyle Chess Open in Karlsruhe, he secured overall victory and qualified for the 2027 Freestyle Chess World Championship. The draw left both Keymer and Vachier-Lagrave tied for first place with 7½ points each, but Keymer won thanks to his superior tiebreak score. Seven players finished half a point behind on 7/9. This group included Magnus Carlsen, who finished third on tiebreaks. | Photo: Nils Rohde / ChessBase

2/27/2026 – Round one of the Masters in Prague produced four wins and one draw. In round two things proceeded at a more leisurely pace with three draws and two wins. But the decisive games were interesting. David Anton (pictured) had an inferior position out of the opening against Jorden Van Foreest, but then won in 27 moves. And Hans Niemann had a winning position against Aravindh Chithambaram but overlooked a tactical possibility in time pressure and lost. | Photo: Petr Vrabec / Prague Chess Festival

2/26/2026 – Vincent Keymer had a rough start at the Prague Chess Festival, losing with black to Jorden van Foreest. After a botched opening, he missed a hidden counterblow that could have turned the game around. This game was only one of many interesting battles at the opening round in the Prague Masters, as all five games featured hard-fought struggles. Four games ended decisively, with only world champion Gukesh Dommaraju and Hans Niemann signing a draw. That draw, however, was the longest game of the round. | Photo: Petr Vrabec / Prague Chess Festival

2/17/2026 – Deep Blue was the first computer to win a match against the reigning World Champion. In May 1997, Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in a six-game match by 3½–2½. Deep Blue was also the first computer ever to win a game under classical time control against a reigning World Champion - the first game of the first match between Deep Blue and Kasparov. In light of these successes, it is easy to forget that Kasparov won the first match 4–2 and at times made the supercomputer, which calculated an average of 126 million positions per second, look like little more than a competent beginner. Kasparov recognised the computer's potential at an early stage. | Photo: ChessBase