Prague Chess Festival - Live!

by Carlos Alberto Colodro
2/25/2026 – From 25 February to 6 March 2026, the eighth Prague International Chess Festival is taking place at the Don Giovanni Hotel, bringing together elite competition and a wide programme of side events. In the first round on Wednesday, the Masters section kicks off with several attractive match-ups: top seed Vincent Keymer (pictured) has Black against Jorden van Foreest; World Champion Gukesh has White and faces Hans Niemann, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, winner of the Tata Steel Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, also plays White against Aravindh Chithambaram, winner of the Chess Festival Prague 2025. | Follow the action live starting at 15.00 CET (9.00 ET, 19.30 IST)
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Round 1

The Masters, the Challengers and the Futures are 10-player single round-robin tournaments. Players receive 90 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes until the end of the game, plus 30-second increments starting from move one.

Rounds will be played daily from February 25 to March 6, except on Monday, March 2, the one rest day of the events. The action kicks off daily at 15.00 CET, except in the ninth round, when the games will start four hours earlier.

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Live games and commentary

Masters

Challengers

Futures

Live commentary with Keti Tsatsalashvili & Alojzije Jankovic

ChessBase India live commentary

Full schedule

Prague Chess Festival

Links

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Topics: Prague Chess Festival 2026
Carlos Colodro is a Hispanic Philologist from Bolivia. He works as a freelance translator and writer since 2012. A lot of his work is done in chess-related texts, as the game is one of his biggest interests, along with literature and music.
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Video

60m The Two Knights

This entry into the 60 minutes series concentrates on the Modern variation of the Italian game where White opens the centre early : 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 d4 exd4 5 e5!. This line can be reached by various move orders, most frequently from the Scotch 3 d4 exd4 4 Bc4. It's a sharp variation and Grandmasters such as Evgeny Sveshnikov have used it frequently,with very good results. It's a perfect line for club players to adopt which is relatively easy to learn and which contains many traps. All the main responses are covered here, including 5...d5, 5...Ng4 and 5...Ne4 and the conclusion is that is is difficult for Black to equalize in a straightforward way. Problems are being posed, which over the board might prove tough to solve.