Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is the biennial team event in which national teams compete in open and women's sections, ranked by match points under a Swiss-system pairing.
Also called: Olympiad
The Olympiad is the largest team competition in chess. Countries send teams to an open section and a women's section, and the host federation may enter extra teams. Pairing follows the Swiss system: teams are ranked for the first round by the average rating of their four highest-rated players, with the fifth player's rating as a tiebreaker, and later rounds pair teams by match points, with no team meeting another twice (FIDE Olympiad Pairing Rules, articles 1, 3 and 6).
Under the regulations for the 2026 edition, each section is an 11 round Swiss, a team is four players plus one reserve, and a match win scores two points and a draw one. Results are counted twice, as game points on the boards and as match points for the team. An odd number of teams leaves one team with a bye worth one match point and two game points.
The event is also notable for titles: the Handbook awards direct titles for strong results at the Olympiad, including a waiver of the minimum rating for direct Candidate Master awards. For players, it is a team format where individual strength is not enough, and board order matters. See team event, board number and swiss system.
A neighboring idea is World Chess Championship. 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.
Rating and title terms like "Chess Olympiad" 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
A team event is a competition in which players represent a side, individual games on several boards add up to a match result, and the team is ranked by the totals.
A board number identifies the table at which a game is played, and in a team match it also names a player's place in the team order, with board one for the first player.
In a Swiss-system tournament the number of rounds is announced in advance, nobody is knocked out, and every round pairs players who have scored about the same so far, never matching the same two players twice.
A bye is a round in which a player has no opponent and still receives points; in a Swiss event it goes to one player when the field is odd.
Candidate Master is the entry-level FIDE title for open play, awarded for reaching a standard rating of 2200, and it does not count towards the title-holder share in norm calculations.
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 Olympiad Pairing Rules, effective 1 January 2022, Articles 1.1, 3.1, 4.3 and 6.1, read Oct 21, 2026.
- FIDE Handbook B.01 FIDE Title Regulations, effective 1 January 2024, Clause 0.6.2, read Oct 21, 2026.
- FIDE Handbook B.01 Table for Direct Titles, effective 1 January 2026, Direct titles table, Olympiad rows, read Oct 21, 2026.
- FIDE Handbook D.02.01 Regulations for the FIDE Chess Olympiad 2026, Main Competition, Articles 3.1, 4.1, 4.2.1 and 4.5.1, read Oct 21, 2026.
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