The Chess Olympiad: history, format and past winners

The Olympiad is the largest chess event in the world by the number of countries represented: in 2026, 206 teams from 204 nations in the open section and 189 teams in the women's section. It is also a competition in which the best players in the world face, round by round, teams from federations where chess is still developing.

The format of the Chess Olympiad

Each federation recognised by FIDE may enter one team per section, made up of at most five players: four regulars and one reserve. Until the Dresden Olympiad in 2008, teams had two reserves. In each round, the captain fields four players in the order fixed before the tournament.

The first Olympiads were played as round robins, with each team meeting all the others. As the number of countries grew, FIDE moved to the Swiss system in 1976. Ties on match points, which are common, are settled by tiebreaks: in 2022 as in 2026, it was these that decided the champion or medal-winning team.

An Olympiad match: a worked example

Suppose a match between two teams, A and B. On board one, A wins; on board two, a draw; on board three, B wins; on board four, A wins. A scores 1 + ½ + 0 + 1 = 2.5 board points, B scores 1.5: A wins the match and receives 2 match points, B receives none. Had the score been 2-2, each team would have received 1 match point.

After the eleven rounds, the ranking is decided on total match points, then on tiebreaks for teams that are level. A team can therefore score more board points than another and finish behind it, if it lost one match too many.

A history that begins in 1924

In 1924, alongside the Paris Olympic Games, an international team tournament, known as the unofficial Olympiad, was played from 12 to 20 June; Czechoslovakia won it. The same year, the International Chess Federation was founded in Paris. The first official Olympiad of FIDE took place in London in 1927, with sixteen countries; Hungary won it. In the second half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union dominated the event and still holds the record for gold medals.

Chess is not an Olympic sport for all that: the Olympiad is a FIDE competition in its own right, unconnected with the International Olympic Committee. Le Palais des Échecs traces the history of chess and the Olympic Games.

Recent Chess Olympiad winners

No Olympiad was played in person between 2018 and 2022, during the Covid-19 pandemic, hence the absence of 2020 from this table. The last two editions illustrate the shift of chess's centre of gravity towards Asia: in Budapest in 2024, India won both sections, a double that only China had achieved since the Soviet era, in 2018; in Samarkand in 2026, Uzbekistan, already the winner in Chennai in 2022, triumphed at home, beating Ukraine 2.5-1.5 in the last round.

The 2026 Olympiad in detail

The 46th Olympiad was held in Samarkand from 15 to 27 September 2026, alongside the 3rd FIDE Olympiad for people with disabilities and the FIDE Congress. In the open section, Uzbekistan, led on top board by Nodirbek Abdusattorov, finished ahead of India, who drew 2-2 against Hungary in the last round, and Germany, who beat the Netherlands. In the women's section, China won their final match 3-1 against Vietnam; Kazakhstan took silver and India bronze on tiebreak. The French team finished ninth in the open.

The Olympiad and other team competitions

The Olympiad is not the only competition between nations: FIDE also organises a World Team Championship, and the ECU a European Team Championship. Clubs have their own events, from national interclub leagues such as the French Top 16 to the European Club Cup. Individual competitions, from the French Championship to the World Championship, are covered on the page about chess championships, and the world cycle on the page about the Candidates Tournament.