Announcement, Venue, Schedule and Regulations

The official programme opens on 22 November with Media Day and the Opening Ceremony. The first classical game will be played on 24 November, and the final scheduled game on 11 December. Tiebreaks, if required, will follow on 12 December.

Gukesh and Sindarov will both be 20 when the match begins, making this the youngest World Championship contest in history. For Gukesh, Geneva will mark the first defence of the title he won in Singapore in 2024. Sindarov arrives as the winner of both the 2025 FIDE World Cup and the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament.

“A World Championship match is not like anything else in our sport,” said Viswanathan Anand, FIDE Interim President. “You sit across from the same opponent for three weeks with the world watching. I have played World Championship matches in some extraordinary cultural settings, including the Olympic Museum in Lausanne and the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, and a setting like that gives the contest a character of its own. The Fondation Martin Bodmer belongs to that tradition and is a fitting venue for this match.”

The players

Gukesh D, representing India, became the 18th World Champion in December 2024. He defeated Ding Liren 7.5-6.5 after winning the fourteenth and final classical game in Singapore. At 18, he became the youngest undisputed World Champion in chess history. His road to the title also included victory at the 2024 FIDE Candidates Tournament and individual and team gold medals at the 2024 Chess Olympiad.

Javokhir Sindarov, representing Uzbekistan, qualified for the match by winning the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament in Cyprus. He secured first place with a round to spare, finished unbeaten and scored 10/14. That result came less than five months after he became the youngest winner of the FIDE World Cup in Goa. Sindarov is the first player from Uzbekistan to qualify for a match for the undisputed World Championship title.

Match format

The match consists of a maximum of 14 classical games. The first player to reach 7.5 points wins the match and the title. The time control is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game. A 30-second increment is added from move 41. Draw offers are not permitted before Black’s 40th move. Before that point, a draw may be claimed through the Chief Arbiter or Deputy Chief Arbiter only in cases of threefold repetition or stalemate.

If the score is 7-7 after the classical games, the title will be decided on 12 December. The tiebreak begins with four games at 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment per move. If the score remains level, the players contest two games at 10 minutes plus five seconds, followed, if necessary, by two games at three minutes plus two seconds. Should the tie persist, three-minute-plus-two-second games will be played one at a time, with colours reversed after each draw, until a decisive result is reached.

USD 2.5 million prize fund

The prize fund is USD 2.5 million, net of any applicable local taxes. Under the standard distribution, each player receives USD 200,000 for every game won, including a win by forfeit, and the remaining balance is divided equally between the two players.

If the final classical score is 7.5-6.5 with 13 decisive games, or 8-6 with all 14 games decisive, the winner will receive USD 1.3 million and the runner-up USD 1.2 million. The same USD 1.3 million to USD 1.2 million split applies if the match is decided in tiebreaks.

Sponsor

Salesforce joined FIDE as Title Sponsor and Technological Partner in September 2026. The multi-year agreement covers the World Championship Matches in 2026 and 2028 as well as the Women’s World Championship Match in 2027. Salesforce is also the official AI partner of the FIDE World Chess Championship and the FIDE rankings, and the agreement brings its Agentforce 360 portfolio, including Slack, to FIDE events and to the rating list.

The venue 

Founded in 1971, the Fondation Martin Bodmer is a heritage library and museum that houses and exhibits the greatest texts of world literature and human history. This unique place presents major testimonies of human thought from the origins of writing to the present day.

The Fondation holds some 150,000 documents in nearly 120 languages, making up one of the finest private collections in the world. It includes hundreds of papyri, Western and Eastern medieval manuscripts, and thousands of pages of autograph manuscripts and rare engravings. This Bibliotheca Bodmeriana has been inscribed, since 2015, on UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” register, an initiative aimed at preserving and disseminating the world’s documentary heritage.

The Fondation Martin Bodmer carries out a range of conservation, restoration and digitisation projects with a view to making its documents available online. Since 2003, it has welcomed visitors to its modern underground museum designed by the great Swiss architect Mario Botta, in the incomparable setting of the Cologny hillside where it stands, with breathtaking views over Lake Geneva and the city of Geneva. In addition to its permanent exhibition, the Fondation Martin Bodmer organises temporary exhibitions and cultural outreach activities on themes related to science, the arts, history and literature, giving the public access to these authentic treasures that have shaped the history of humanity.

Bringing the World Championship to the Fondation places one of the greatest contests of chess within a venue devoted to preserving the history of ideas.

“We are thrilled and delighted to welcome this global event to our institution. This distinction resonates particularly strongly with the legacy of our founder, several of whose works were devoted or closely linked to chess,” said Professor Jacques Berchtold, Director of the Fondation Martin Bodmer. “It is a great source of pride to see sporting excellence, culture and history come together here.”

About Salesforce 

Salesforce helps organizations of any size become Agentic Enterprises, integrating humans, agents, apps, and data on a trusted, unified platform to unlock unprecedented growth and innovation.

Visit https://www.salesforce.com for more information.

Further information on tickets, media accreditation, broadcast coverage and visitor arrangements will be announced through the official event channels.