Candidates Tournament
The Candidates Tournament is the FIDE event, played by eight qualifiers, whose winner becomes the challenger in the next World Championship match against the reigning champion.
Also called: Candidates
Think of the Candidates as the last gate before the championship match. Eight players arrive and only the winner goes on to face the champion. FIDE's cycle chart shows the feeders: the World Cup, the Grand Prix series and the Grand Swiss lead into this event, and how many places each one sends is set in the regulations for that edition. A parallel Women's Candidates Tournament exists for the women's title.
The 2026 regulations use a double round robin of 14 rounds, so each player meets every rival twice, once with each color. A win scores a point and a draw half a point. The long format rewards stamina and preparation against seven specific opponents, and a bad round can be repaired later.
If players finish level on first place, the winner is found by a play-off of faster games in up to three stages, not by a calculation. Ties for other places are separated by the criteria listed in the regulations, which include the results between the tied players. Compare double round robin, world chess championship and tiebreak.
It sits close to Invitational tournament. An invitational tournament is an event where the organizer chooses the participants, so entry depends on an invitation instead of a registration form and an entry fee.
Rating and title terms like "Candidates Tournament" matter once you know your next step, and the improvement plans by rating band set out a weekly routine for each rating range.
Related terms
The World Chess Championship is the match, run under FIDE regulations, in which the reigning champion defends the title against the winner of the Candidates Tournament.
A double round-robin tournament is a round-robin format in which every pair of players meets twice, once with each color, so each player plays every opponent as both White and Black.
A tiebreak is a rule that ranks players who finish on the same score, either by a calculation from the results or by extra games, so that the final standings can be published.
A round-robin tournament schedules each participant against every other participant exactly once from a fixed table, so the standings involve no pairing choices and an even field of n players needs n minus 1 rounds.
An invitational tournament is an event where the organizer chooses the participants, so entry depends on an invitation instead of a registration form and an entry fee.
Guides that go further
What a rating measures, how FIDE, Lichess, US Chess and chess.com compute theirs, and why the numbers differ.
How the Candidate Master, FIDE Master, International Master and Grandmaster titles are earned, with every Handbook clause.
The Handbook rules for a first FIDE rating: five rated games, the 1400 floor, the two 1800 draws and a worked example.
Sources
- FIDE Handbook D.01.01 FIDE Individual World Championship Cycles, World Championship Cycle Structure, read Oct 21, 2026.
- FIDE Handbook D.01.06 Regulations for the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026, Articles 2.1, 4.1 and 4.4, read Oct 21, 2026.
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