ChessBase

• Candidates Round 5 - Live!

  The Candidates Tournaments form the final qualifying stage of the FIDE World Championship cycle. Each tournament features eight of the world's strongest players competing in a double round-robin format over fourteen rounds of classical chess. Following the first rest day of the event, sole leader Javokhir Sindarov faces top seed Hikaru Nakamura with the black pieces. | Follow the games live with expert commentary starting at 14.30 CEST (8.30 ET, 18.00 IST) | Photo: Yoav Nis

• Freestyle Chess in Karlsruhe!

  The Freestyle Chess Open in Karlsruhe has begun as part of the grenke Chess Festival, which brought together nearly 4,000 players across multiple events. Led by Magnus Carlsen, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Vincent Keymer, the main Freestyle Open features nine rounds with randomly generated starting positions. The winner will secure a place in the 2027 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship. | Photo: Jeroen van den Belt / ChessBase

• FIDE ratings - April 2026

  At the top three places in the world rankings, nothing has changed: Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana. Vincent Keymer has lost a few points and swapped places with Nodirbek Abdusattorov. Hou Yifan is the highest-rated female chess player in the world, and world champion Gukesh Dommaraju is the best under-20 player. Alua Nurman is the new number one in the girls' youth category.

• The Birth of a Journey

  Praful Zaveri is the founder of Indian Chess School, where he has trained more than 5000 students. In 2023 he began writing a book, Shat Shat Vande Chess, on the cultural, historical, and philosophical journey of chess, on the 15,000‑year “odyssey” of the game. Now he has decided to make it into a film. Here is the first trailer – and Praful's thoughts on the enterprise.

• Chess Olympiad: Cloud power for your national squad

  Success in world-class chess is built long before the game begins. With the "Federation Package", developed specifically for national federations, players and coaches gain access to the complete professional ChessBase software, the world's largest chess database, and powerful cloud analysis – at a price that provides up to five times more computing power than individual solutions! A long-term investment that will measurably enhance the performance of the entire team.

• News on the 1896 Schiffers vs Steinitz Match

  Wilhelm Steinitz had lost his World Championship title to Emanuel Lasker in 1894, but he still retained the right to a return match. That rematch was scheduled to take place in Moscow at the end of 1896. Before that, however, Steinitz played a training match against Emanuel Schiffers. Join us on a brief journey back in time to Rostov-on-Don in 1896.

• Endgame Challenge Solutions

  Were you able to solve the challenge positions we gave you last week? Were you able to defeat the diagrams, which defended tenatiously? Today we bring you all solutions, with very instructive video explanations by Jared Modica, a chess content creator from Austin, Texas. He shows us how to solve tatical lines of play, and how to handle pawns in endgames.

• Most attractive chess players

  Who is your favourite chess player – of all time, from the history of chess? Whose games do you enjoy the most? Is it one of the greats from the 19th century, the world champion legends of the twentieth? Or is it a player who is still active? Tell us your choices – and we will compare them with what a chess AI chooses, after evaluating millions of games.

• ChessBase´26: A Players Guide (5)

  "Many players use ChessBase, it is the most popular chess software by far, writes GM Iniyan Pa. "Yet, not many people are fully aware of all of its features, and fail to utilise most of them. In this guide I have tried to show the features that I think are vital and important so that the user may gain the most out of the ChessBase. I hope it helps them in their development." We are deeply indebted to Iniyan for his remarkable five-part training review.

• The Chess World in 2026

  The chess world has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. From a game on the fringes of public interest, it has become part of the media mainstream. This year will see several major events and developments that promise to have a profound impact on the future of chess. Milan Dinić, editor of The British Chess Magazine, has described the main driving factors and what we can expect in 2026.