4/30/2026 – World number one Magnus Carlsen is set to return to classical tournament play at the TePe Sigeman Chess Tournament, scheduled for 1–7 May in Malmö. The Norwegian will face an ambitious field that includes Tata Steel Masters winner Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Arjun Erigaisi and rising star Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus (pictured), who recently became the youngest player to ever cross the 2700 rating mark. Played as an eight-player round-robin, the long-running Swedish event once again combines established elite names with emerging contenders. | Photo: ChessBase / Nils Rohde

4/15/2026 – One prominent guest of the Candidates Tournament in Cyprus is five-time World Champion Vishy Anand, who knows how it feels to play in and win—the Candidates. In an interview with ChessBase, he recalls the early days of databases and floppy disks, talks about the temptations of computer games, how preparation has changed over the years, and the upcoming World Championship match between challenger Javokhir Sindarov and reigning World Champion Gukesh. | Photo: Nils Rohde

3/26/2026 – A life between political pressure, sporting rivalry and unshakeable ambition: Viktor Korchnoi is one of the most fascinating figures in chess history. On 23 March, the chess legend would have turned 95. ChessBase is taking this as an opportunity to provide you with a feature package on the influential figure in the history of chess. | Pictured: Petra and Viktor Korchnoi enjoying a meal aboard the Hamburg Alster steamer at the ChessBase Christmas celebration. | Photos: ChessBase

3/17/2026 – World number one Magnus Carlsen is set to return to classical tournament play at the TePe Sigeman Chess Tournament, scheduled for 1–7 May in Malmö. The Norwegian will face a compact but ambitious field that includes recent Tata Steel Masters winner Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Arjun Erigaisi and several leading young talents. Played as an eight-player round-robin, the long-running Swedish event once again combines established elite names with emerging contenders. | Pictured: Carlsen and Abdusattorov at the Paris leg of the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam | Photo: Lennart Ootes

2/13/2026 – From its early beginnings in Kanjiza and the Chess Classic in Mainz to the officially recognised FIDE championships of 2019 and 2022, the World Chess960 title has followed an uneven but traceable path. Published ahead of the upcoming Freestyle Chess World Championship in Weissenhaus, this overview revisits the main editions of the event, outlining formats, qualification systems and key matches that shaped the development of Freestyle Chess at world championship level. | Pictured: Peter Svidler dealing with a Freestyle Chess starting position (note that the bishops are on the a-file) at the Chess Classic in Mainz | Photo: Frederic Friedel

2/4/2026 – Keep Friday free! You all remember "The Queen's Gambit," the Netflix series telling the story of the (fictional) chess prodigy Beth Harmon. It quickly became the platform’s most-watched miniseries. Now Netflix is doing it again, but this time it's about the (real-life) strongest female chess player ever: Judit Polgar. Keep Friday free to watch it. To get you in the mood Frederic Friedel describes his encounters with Judit – over the last forty years.

1/7/2026 – At Christmas 2025, Stefan Löffler delighted readers of his chess column in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung—one of Germany’s leading national newspapers—with a Christmas story. Forty years earlier, Garry Kasparov, still not yet world champion, had played a clock simul against the Bundesliga team of Hamburger SK and lost. Two years later, Kasparov returned to Hamburg as world champion. This time he won the rematch, and during the visit encountered a remarkable new development that was to change the game profoundly: a chess database.

1/1/2026 – Did you enjoy our Christmas puzzles? They were computer-resistant, which meant you could not simply ask a chess engine to solve them for you. Today we bring you a first batch of solutions – and reveal for the first time the solution to the decades-old problem of a game starting 1.e4 and ending on move five with knight takes rook mate. The solutions to the remaining problems will appear shortly.

12/25/2025 – Christmas day is usually celebrated with a Christmas tree – in problem chess circles occasionally with a puzzle shaped like a Christmas tree. Like this example, composed by the famous Thomas Rayner Dawson, 101 years ago. It illustrates the universal principle of symmetry, and how it can be broken in a chess problem. Mathematics professor Christian Hesse delves into the very profound thinking behind the problem. But you are invited to solve it first.

12/3/2025 – Ed Schröder, pioneer of chess engine programming, has in his retirement turned his attention to a new and very exciting project: to extract games from a database collection that are especially aggressive – that are short and have daring sacrifices and king attacks. He shows us the kinds of result you can get. Best of all: you can download the utility and use it on your databases.

12/2/2025 – Ed Schröder is a pioneer in chess programming. In the 1990s his program Rebel won a number of World Championships in computer chess, and always had a special place in the community, due to its playing style. In 2003 he retired from competitive computer chess, only releasing freeware versions of Rebel. Now Ed has come out of retirement and is undertaking some interesting new projects – like extracting the most interesting games from historical databases. And he is sharing them with us.

10/20/2025 – In October and November 2000, the World Championship match between Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik took place in London under unusual circumstances. With the rediscovered Berlin Defence, Kramnik neutralised Kasparov’s attacking power and became the 14th world champion. A look back. | Photo: Ben Bartels

10/14/2025 – ChessBase co-founder Matthias Wüllenweber talks in an interview about 40 years of ChessBase, 35 years of Fritz and much more. The interview was first published in the October issue of Schach-Magazin 64 and appears here with the kind permission of Otto Borik, editor-in-chief of the chess magazine. | Photos: ChessBase / Nils Rohde / Archive Otto Borik

10/13/2025 – Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665) was a French mathematician who made pioneering contributions to analytic geometry, calculus, optics, and probability. He is best known for Fermat's Last Theorem, which famously remained unproven for over three centuries. Then, thirty years ago (in 1995), the mathematician Andrew Wiles published the comprehensive proof. In his book "Chess Stories" mathematician Prof Christian Hesse, told us how he applied Fermat's final conjecture to chess.

9/30/2025 – In the boxing ring, he learned what it means to pick yourself up again and again and draw new strength from setbacks. On 7 October, former world boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko will tell us about his life, the current situation in Ukraine and resilience in times of crisis. Vladimir is an old friend who visited ChessBase a number of times, together with his brother Vitaly. We look forward to seeing him again.

9/17/2025 – In his 9/11 memorial article in the German Zeit Magazin GM Helmut Pfleger tells us how William Lombardy, the former youth world champion and, alongside Fischer, the strongest American player, bitterly complained to him during the Kasparov-Anand world championship match that began on September 11, 1995 that he had never been accorded the honour being inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame. In 2016 Maurice Ashley, the first African-American chess grandmaster in history, did it and joined the ranks of Paul Morphy, Bobby Fischer, and Frank Marshall before him.

9/5/2025 – On Tuesday 22-year-old Ukrainian GM Kirill Shevchenko was stripped of his title and banned from competitive chess for three years. He was caught cheating during the Spanish Team Championship last year – and admitted to his wrongdoing. The case renewed our interest in the subject, and we take a look back at the evolution of cheating in chess – and the very tricky way it can be exercised.

9/4/2025 – An experienced trainer, Ivan Sokolov helped the likes of Alireza Firouzja and Parham Maghsoodloo to develop their talent. In his FritzTrainer series for ChessBase, he showcases a pragmatic style, focusing on general ideas rather than specific lines. One of the games analysed in the section devoted to practical play is Garry Kasparov against Jan Timman from Corus 2001, which included a number of instructive mistakes by both legendary grandmasters. | Photo: Frederic Friedel

8/31/2025 – ChessBase Magazine offers a window to the world of professional chess. Our columnist Nagesh Havanur takes a look at CBM 226. All games from the European Championship, 27 annotated games, 11 opening surveys, 4 opening videos, 7 demo lectures and several exercises for training. Annotators include two-time European champion Matthias Bluebaum (pictured), Frederik Svane, Daniil Yuffa, Maxim Rodshtein and Gabriel Sargissian, among others. | Photo: European Chess Union

8/3/2025 – Frederic Friedel reveals what the Egyptian pyramids, an internship with Otto Borik and a frog game on the home computer have to do with his career in Germany's leading chess magazine SCHACH-MAGAZIN 64, where he was interviewed by Stefan Liebig. The four-page article is reproduced here in English with the kind permission of Schuenemann-Verlag. | Photos: Archiv Frederic Friedel

4/29/2025 – Max Euwe became the fifth World Chess Champion after beating Alexander Alekhine in the 1935 World Championship match. A maths teacher by profession, Euwe remained an amateur throughout his life, but was still the best chess player in the Netherlands, and one of the world's best players.

4/22/2025 – I have told the story often: in an interview in 2020 I said that in five years I expected at least two of the top ten players in the world would be Indian. My prediction was met with deep scepticism. It was clearly the unrealistic optimism of a friend and admirer of young Indian talents. It is true I was wrong. In five years since the prediction three have risen into the top ten bracket, and a fourth is on his way into it.

4/5/2025 – Sunil who? He is one of the most successful chess coaches in the USA, running the National Scholastic Chess Foundation (NSCF) teacher training programs. Sunil Weeramantry has looked after literally thousands of budding chess players - including his stepson, who ascended to the top of the chess world. Know who we are talking about. | Pictures by Frederic Friedel and NSCF

4/1/2025 – For decades we rigorously celebrated April Fool's day. But our pranks became progressively more difficult over the years. If we were able to construct a fake story, one that was genuinely funny, our friends at Google made it possible to check it in seconds. So we abandoned the tradition. Today, however, we present you with hoaxes and counterfeits in the history of chess. We had expert assistance in doing so.