Samarkand, Uzbekistan ¡ Silk Road International Exhibition Centre
The first Chess Olympiad held in Central Asia: 11 rounds in Samarkand, with 205 open and 187 womenâs teams.
Round times are local to the venue.
The 46th Chess Olympiad is the first to be held in Central Asia. Samarkand hosts both the open and the womenâs events at the Silk Road International Exhibition Centre from 15 to 27 September 2026, alongside the 97th FIDE Congress and the 3rd FIDE Chess Olympiad for People with Disabilities.
Uzbekistan comes in as a chess power in its own right: the national team won the open event in Chennai in 2022 and took bronze in Budapest in 2024. As hosts, the federation fields three teams in each section.
Eleven rounds of Swiss pairings, four players per team on the boards and one reserve. A match win is worth two points, a draw one. Ties are broken by the SonnebornâBerger system, then by total game points, then by the sum of the opponentsâ match points.
The open winners take the Hamilton-Russell Cup, the womenâs winners the Vera Menchik Cup, and the federation with the best combined result across both sections receives the Gaprindashvili Cup.