Norway Chess, Grand Chess Tour, Sinquefield Cup: the elite circuit

Alongside FIDE's official cycle, a handful of private organisers bring the world's best players together every year in richly funded closed tournaments. Their formats often innovate: Armageddon games, a blend of rapid and blitz, randomised chess. This page presents the main ones, with verified results.

Norway Chess

In a decade, Norway Chess has established itself among the strongest tournaments on the calendar, and Magnus Carlsen has won it seven times. Its trademark is the Armageddon: every drawn classical game is immediately followed by a decisive game, in which White has more time but a draw counts as a win for Black. The scoring system makes every round decisive and favours attacking play. In September 2026, the tournament received FIDE's award for best round-robin tournament.

In 2026, in its first edition in Oslo, India's R Praggnanandhaa won it with 18 points, ahead of Wesley So (17) and Alireza Firouzja (15.5), thanks to a win against Vincent Keymer in the last round. Kazakhstan's Bibisara Assaubayeva won the women's tournament with a round to spare.

The Norway Chess Armageddon scoring: an example

Norway Chess's scoring changes the way points are counted. Take a player who, over the ten rounds of the six-player double round robin, wins two classical games, loses two, and draws six, winning four Armageddon games and losing two.

A win in a classical game is worth twice as much as a draw followed by an Armageddon win: the system pushes players to take risks in the slow game rather than rely on the quick one. The 2026 winner, R Praggnanandhaa, totalled 18 points in ten rounds, after a run of four wins.

The Grand Chess Tour

The Grand Chess Tour (GCT) was launched in 2015 and announced at the Saint Louis Chess Club in the United States. It is a circuit of several legs, classical or rapid and blitz, whose results earn points in the overall standings; the leaders qualify for a final. Norway Chess was part of the first edition, in 2015, then left the circuit in 2016.

The rapid and blitz legs are played under different rules from classical games: no compulsory scorekeeping, lighter penalties, quick decisions by the arbiter. For anyone wanting to understand what happens at the board at these time controls, Le Palais des Échecs explains the rules of blitz and techniques for fast play. The official definitions are on the page about time controls in chess.

The Sinquefield Cup

The Sinquefield Cup is named after Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, founders of the St. Louis chess club where it is played. The first edition, in 2013, brought together four players in a double round robin and was won by Magnus Carlsen. The tournament became the flagship classical leg of the Grand Chess Tour in 2015, with ten players in a round robin.

America's Wesley So won it in 2025, after a blitz tiebreak against Praggnanandhaa and Caruana, who finished on the same score, then again in 2026, his third title in the event, beating Praggnanandhaa in an Armageddon game after drawn rapid tiebreaks.

Freestyle Chess: randomised chess at the highest level

A parallel circuit has grown up around Freestyle Chess (Chess960), where the starting position of the pieces is drawn at random to neutralise opening preparation. The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour ran several legs in 2025, the first at Weissenhaus (Germany) in February, won by Vincent Keymer. In February 2026, FIDE and Freestyle Chess organised the first official Freestyle Chess World Championship at the same venue, reserved for eight players.

Private circuits and the official cycle

These tournaments do not award an official title, but they matter in the world race: elite tournaments of this kind can earn points towards the FIDE Circuit, which qualifies players for the Candidates Tournament. For the other big closed tournament of the year, played in January in the Netherlands, see the page on Tata Steel Chess at Wijk aan Zee.