How the Chess Olympiad works, and why India start as favourites

The Chess Olympiad is a team event: five players per team, four boards per match, scored by match points. India won both the Open and Women's events in Budapest 2024 and return to defend in Samarkand from 15 to 27 September with largely the same squads.

The Olympiad is the only event in chess that resembles international sport as most people understand it — nations against nations, flags on the board, a medal table at the end. It is also structurally unlike almost anything else in the game, which is worth understanding before the first round.

The format

Element	Detail
Teams per nation	1
Players per team	5
Boards per match	4
Rounds	11
System	Swiss

The Swiss system pairs teams with similar scores against each other as the tournament progresses. In round one the top seeds play the bottom seeds; by round eleven, the leaders play each other. This produces a natural funnel toward a decisive result without requiring 200 teams to play 199 games each.

Five players, four boards, means one player rests each round. Captains decide who sits out, which is a real tactical decision — resting a strong player against a weaker opponent to save them for a harder match is common, but it requires knowing who the harder match is.

How matches are scored

Each board is a normal chess game: 1 point for a win, 0.5 for a draw, 0 for a loss. But the match result comes from a second layer:

Board results	Match points
3 or more board points (e.g. 3-1, 2.5-1.5)	Win: 2
2-2	Draw: 1
Fewer than 2 board points	Loss: 0

Winning 4-0 earns the same two match points as winning 2.5-1.5. The margin does not matter for the standings — only for tiebreaks at the end.

Tiebreaks

When teams finish level on match points, the order applied is:

1. Board points — the total of all individual game results across eleven rounds
2. Buchholz score — the sum of match points scored by your opponents
3. Further criteria rarely needed

Board points as the first tiebreak is what makes running up the score sometimes matter. A team certain of winning a match 3-1 might still push for the fourth point, because that point could decide the medals.

The 2026 field

Section	Teams
Open	208
Women	192
Total	400

This is a record entry. The previous high was Budapest 2024, and the growth reflects both new federations fielding teams and established programmes sending stronger squads than before.

India's Open squad

Board	Player	Rating
1	Arjun Erigaisi	2759
2	R Praggnanandhaa	2750
3	Nihal Sarin	2718
4	D Gukesh	World Champion
5	Vidit Gujrathi	—

Four of the five are returning from the Budapest gold — Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Arjun and Vidit. Nihal Sarin replaces Pentala Harikrishna on Board 3. The seeding has India second, behind the United States.

Gukesh became World Champion after Budapest, which is worth noting: he arrives as the reigning individual champion defending a team title, a situation that does not arise often.

India's Women's squad

Board	Player
1	Koneru Humpy
2	Divya Deshmukh
3	R Vaishali
4	Vantika Agrawal
5	Savitha Shri B

Humpy returns to lead the squad. Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal both won individual gold medals in Budapest; Vaishali continues as a core member. The depth is what matters here — India can rest players against weaker teams without a noticeable drop in strength.

Why team chess is different

An individual tournament is a pure test of playing strength. A team event adds variables: board order, rest decisions, the psychology of playing for something other than yourself.

It is possible to lose your own game and still feel you contributed, if you held a stronger player to a draw while your teammates won. It is possible to win your own game and feel responsible for a match loss. This changes how players approach their positions, and it produces chess that looks different from a normal tournament.

What to watch

The draw in round one is already known. India will face lower-seeded opposition early and the serious tests come in rounds eight through eleven, when the leaders meet. A defending champion's job in the early rounds is simply not to lose — match points are match points, and running up the board count is useful only for tiebreaks.

The threat to India is not form but depth of competition. The United States, China and several European teams all fielded strong Olympiad squads in 2024, and the same applies this year. A single unexpected loss in a late round can be fatal, which is why captaincy decisions — who rests, who plays tough boards — will matter as much as any individual brilliance.