Strong field led by Deac, Tari and Ivanchuk
The Reykjavík Open is set to return from 25 to 31 March 2026 at the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre in the Icelandic capital. The long-standing international tournament continues to attract a broad field of competitors, building on the record participation seen in 2025, when 419 players from 51 countries took part in the nine-round Swiss event.
The open tournament follows a nine-round Swiss format with accelerated pairings. The time control is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 15 minutes for the remainder of the game, with a 30-second increment from move one. Tiebreak criteria feature the number of games played, Buchholz Cut-1 and Buchholz. Players may request up to three half-point byes in rounds one to seven, provided the request is submitted in advance.
In this video course, experts including Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Karsten Müller and Oliver Reeh, examine the games of Boris Spassky. Let them show you which openings Spassky chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were and much more.The organisers have confirmed that the player list for 2026 is already full, underlining the event's continued popularity among professionals and amateurs alike. A list of 436 registered players has been published, going over the 419 mark from last year.
The top seeds are headed by Romania's Bogdan-Daniel Deac (2655), followed by Norway's Aryan Tari (2642) and the experienced Ukrainian grandmaster Vasyl Ivanchuk (2624). Other leading participants include Maxime Lagarde (2618), rising French talent Marc'Andria Maurizzi (2614), Jianchao Zhou (2584), Mustafa Yilmaz (2582), Elham Amar (2581) and Max Warmerdam (2575).
Vasyl Ivanchuk finished in second place at the 2025 edition, as the player with the best tiebreak score among a ten-player group with 7/9 points | Photo: Hallfríður Sigurðardóttir
A number of strong women players are also in the mix: the highest-rated are Carissa Yip from the United States (2486), Stavroula Tsolakidou from Greece (2479) and Nino Batsiashvili from Georgia (2472), all three among the top-20 women players in the world.
The tournament also boasts a rich roll of honour. The inaugural edition in 1964 was won by former world champion Mikhail Tal, and over the decades the event has featured numerous distinguished winners, including Vasily Smyslov (1974), Walter Browne (1978) and Larry Christiansen (1998).
Smyslov cultivated a clear positional style and even in sharp tactical positions often relied more on his intuition than on concrete calculation of variations. Let our authors introduce you into the world of Vasily Smyslov.
In recent years, champions have included Praggnanandhaa (2022), Nils Grandelius (2023), Bogdan-Daniel Deac (2024) and Parham Maghsoodloo, who claimed clear first place in the 2025 edition.
Beyond the main competition, the festival programme is set to feature a range of accompanying activities, including a blitz tournament, a pub quiz, online coverage involving invited streamers, and organised excursions such as the traditional Golden Circle tour.
Schedule
Registered participants
In this course, you will learn the foundations and key ideas of the Vienna Game and discover a variety of systems that make you extremely difficult to prepare for.
The Vienna Game is one of the most underrated openings in modern chess. While the Ruy Lopez and Italian dominate elite practice, the Vienna offers rich, creative play with far less theoretical burden and enormous practical value.
Free video sample: Introduction
Free video sample: 1: 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.f4 exf4 - Martin vs Adams
...436 players
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