GM Richard Rapport‘s Kazchess and GM Ding Liren‘s Dragon Chilling are the only teams on a perfect 8/8 after day one of the 2026 World Rapid & Blitz Team Championships in Hong Kong. All the other favorites suffered defeat, with top-seed WR Chess (GMs Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana…) losing a match as early as round two, while second-seed Hexamind (GMs Alireza Firouzja, Anish Giri…) slumped to defeat in two matches. Fifth-seed Endgame.AI also lost one match, but GM Hans Niemann scored 4/4 on top board.
Day two starts Thursday, June 18, at 2 a.m. ET / 08:00 CEST / 11:30 a.m. IST.
World Rapid & Blitz Team Championship Returns For 4th Edition
The FIDE World Rapid Team Championship was first held as a three-day event in August 2023 in Dusseldorf, Germany, returned in Astana, Kazakhstan in 2024 as a four-day tournament with blitz added, and then grew to five days in London in 2025, with the blitz extended to two days. It’s back in the same format this year, running June 17-21 in the Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Hong Kong.
The event is open to any team of six players (selected from a maximum of nine), with no restrictions on the nationality of the competitors. Given the location, it’s no surprise that of the 393 players as many as 91 are from China, with another 35 from Hong Kong—next highest is India on 34 players. The top teams feature a formidable lineup of the world’s best players, however, with only GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Ian Nepomniachtchi not in action among the world’s top-15 rapid players.
The most notable player returning is the world number-one Carlsen, who had skipped the 2025 event.
Carlsen came straight from Bangkok, where he won the ASEAN E-Sports Chess Cup, which also featured his teammates Caruana and GM Alexandra Kosteniuk.
We arrived! 🇭🇰🌏
WR Chess Team is ready to fight for the World Championship in Hong Kong.
On 16 June at 09:45 AM, the Rosewood Hotel will host the only official press conference featuring Magnus Carlsen during his stay in Hong Kong.
For the first time ever, World No. 1 Magnus… pic.twitter.com/yx5dZKci1g
— Wadim Rosenstein (@WadimRosenstein) June 14, 2026
Carlsen commented at a press conference organized by WR Chess and clashing with an opening press conference from FIDE: “Last time in 2024 we won the blitz tournament but did not win the rapid, and I think everybody kind of wants to do something about that!”
World Rapid & Blitz Team Championship Winners
| Year | Rapid | Blitz | City | |
| 2023 | WR Chess Team | Not held | Dusseldorf | |
| 2024 | Al-Ain ACMG UAE | WR Chess Team | Astana | |
| 2025 | Team MGD1 | WR Chess Team | London |
Carlsen also added: “It’s special that my wife was actually born in Hong Kong, about 28 years ago during the previous World Cup, exactly on the day that Norway beat Brazil, so for me this is like a little bit of a pilgrimage.”
My wife was actually born in Hong Kong, about 28 years ago during the previous World Cup, exactly on the day that Norway beat Brazil, so for me this is like a little bit of a pilgrimage.
—Magnus Carlsen
This year Norway beat Iraq 4-1 hours before the action began, while Hong Kong also has some special meaning for Carlsen’s teammate GM Wesley So, who arrived a week early straight from Norway Chess and mentioned, “My mother grew up in Hong Kong for a bit, and I’ve never been to Hong Kong before.”
Each team fields six players per round and must include at least one female player and—the most unusual part of the whole event—one “recreational player,” which is defined as a player who has never crossed an official 2000 rating in any format. That’s seen the sponsor of WR Chess, Wadim Rosenstein, become a FIDE world champion, while we’ve also seen FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich take part in previous events.
The obvious “trick,” however, is to find the strongest possible under- or unrated player. A Chinese team memorably did that with the unrated, 2400-strength Pang Bo…
This is just too wholesome 😊 Board 6 of China Decade Team Pang Bo is on an impressive 16/16 streak, gets very excited and celebrates another win with his captain Ni Hua pic.twitter.com/6IiSpjlBgK
— PhotoChess (@photochess) August 5, 2024
…we’ve seen prodigies who are only very briefly going to remain below 2000, and this year, for instance, Niemann recruited online for the position.
Endgame AI’s team for Hong Kong is only missing the amateur board.
Our team consists of myself, Denis Lazavik, Amin Tabatabaei, Lenier Dominguez, and Zhu Jiner. We are looking for the best U2000 FIDE Rapid and Blitz player in the world.
DM me your online account+FIDE profile…
— Hans Niemann (@HansMokeNiemann) March 20, 2026
He came up with 1808-rated Nguyen Anh Dung, who he described as “a very talented player from Vietnam who had a 2900 online blitz rating, which is quite impressive.”
The format for the rapid is simple, with a 12-round Swiss where teams on equal points, as far as possible, are paired against each other in subsequent rounds. Teams earn two match points for a win and one for a draw. Each player has 15 minutes for all their moves, with a 10-second bonus added after each move.
The blitz, which has a more complicated pools and knockout format, starts Saturday.
FIDE World Rapid Team Championship Standings After Day 1 (Top 13)
| Rank | Seed | Team | Matches | + | = | – | Score | Tiebreak |
| 1 | 3 | Kazchess | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 75 |
| 2 | 4 | Dragon Chilling | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 71 |
| 3 | 7 | Mr Birdie and friends | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 74.5 |
| 4 | 17 | Theme International Trading | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 58 |
| 5 | 1 | WR Chess | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 53 |
| 6 | 12 | Uzbekistan | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 52 |
| 7 | 6 | Team MGD1 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 51 |
| 8 | 5 | Endgame.AI | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 49 |
| 9 | 13 | Chessnut Nova | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 47 |
| 10 | 15 | Sky Chess | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 46 |
| 11 | 11 | Chessgurukul | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 42 |
| 12 | 32 | May Wind Newbies | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 6 | 41 |
| 13 | 9 | Barys | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 33.5 |
Kazchess And Dragon Chilling Remain Perfect
Almost all the favorites cruised through round one, but as early as round two they began to encounter serious turbulence, so that by the end of the day only two teams had won all their matches.
Perhaps the best-named team in the event is Dragon Chilling, with the Chinese line-up including former World Champion Ding and current Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun. The name refers back to the Ding Chilling memes that were so popular during his world championship matches, and in an interview he revealed he’d been given a special team jacket with Ding Chilling and not Dragon Chilling written on it.
It wasn’t an entirely smooth return to top-level action, however, as Ding’s 2/4 included a loss to GM Nikolas Theodorou in round four. 16.Qxf6+! was a pretty way to pick up a pawn, though the ending shouldn’t have been as hopeless as it soon became for Ding.
There were more legends in action in Hong Kong, with 56-year-old GM Viswanathan Anand also having a tough time, losing to GM Arkadij Naiditsch and being a little fortunate that his 17-year-old fellow Chennai GM Ilamparthi AR took a draw by repetition in this position.
57-year-old GM Vasyl Ivanchuk scored two wins, with his one loss coming against a certain GM Magnus Carlsen (sadly the game that was transmitted for that clash wasn’t the correct one)!
🤩 Legends meet at the FIDE World Team Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships 2026!#FIDERapidBlitzTeams #HongKong pic.twitter.com/scj8Ybw16q
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) June 17, 2026
GM Peter Svidler also celebrated his 50th birthday with 2.5/3 for a Kazakh team, after being invited to play at the end of a training camp he’d recently given to young players there. He said he clarified with them in advance that “there’s no expectation that I still remember how the pieces move!”
Let’s get back to Ding’s team, however, who went on to win their crucial match 4-2 despite the loss on top board.
17th seed Theme International Trading had been on a giant-killing spree in the first three rounds, defeating 5th seed Endgame.AI and 6th seed and defending champion Team MGD1 (led by GM Arjun Erigaisi). GMs Rinat Jumabayev and Jingyao Tin were both on 3/3, but they met their match against the dragons, with GM Wei Yi scoring a particularly spectacular win in an Anti-Berlin. After breaking through, there was a rain of blows from Wei until a beautiful final move.
A curious situation occurred at the end, with GM Yu Yangyi finding himself in a drawish endgame where a draw would clinch a vital team win. Many players would immediately have taken the draw to avoid team nerves, but Yu pushed on and was rewarded with a 133-move win to finish the day on a perfect 4/4.
The other perfect team is KazChess, who achieved the unlikely outcome of beating both Uzbekistan stars GMs Javokhir Sindarov and Nodirbek Abdusattorov in a single match.
Rapport’s win was particularly impressive, considering he was completely lost by move 16!
The other team to mention among those succeeding on day one is Mr Birdie and friends, who are in sole third place after winning three matches and drawing a third.
GMs Vladislav Artemiev and Sam Sevian are unlikely both to lose very often on the top boards, while GM Awonder Liang scored a perfect 4/4 lower down the order. He also explained the team name, pointing out that they’re friends and, “Mr Birdie is a close bird friend of ours who unfortunately passed away not so long ago, so we’re playing in memory of our pet bird.” Mr Birdie would be proud.
For most top teams, however, it would be a tough start.
Favorites Struggle
WR Chess are the heavy favorites to win both events, despite only having won the rapid back in 2023, but we got evidence for why that might be tough early on. After a 5-1 win in round one, the juggernaut came to a crunching halt in round two, despite having a big rating advantage on all boards but the last.
So was interviewed after round one and had said Carlsen was sitting out the first day, so may have been surprised to find himself replaced in round two, but the Norwegian wasn’t quite able to grind out a win against GM Raunak Sadhwani.
The Indian GM wasn’t too happy since he’s seen GM Daniel Dardha blunder a piece to Caruana on the next board, but after that things would turn Chessnut Nova’s way.
GM Marc Maurizzi ground out an impressive win over GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda, while 16-year-old IM Lu Miaoyi was the star, turning around what had been a lost position early on to defeat former women’s world championship challenger GM Aleksandra Goryachkina, whose rook sac was sound but perhaps unwise!
The match could still have been saved, however, with Rosenstein, who scored a very respectable 2.5/3 for the day, missing chances to beat Tim Letoret on the recreational board. This was the last miss in a rook endgame.
WR Chess recovered to win the remaining matches and remain well in the hunt, which couldn’t be said for 2025 silver medalist Hexamind.
The team, which GM Levon Aronian said at the opening press conference had been strengthened as they’d brought in GM Kateryna Lagno to support GM Divya Deshmukh, suffered a narrow loss in round two.
GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu scored a huge win on top board against GM Alireza Firouzja, correctly playing on when the temptation to take a draw with seconds on his clock must have been strong.
🇮🇳 Praggnanandhaa’s key win over 🇫🇷 Alireza Firouzja helps Chessgurukul defeat Hexamind Chess Team 3.5–2.5. 🔥#FIDERapidBlitzTeams #HongKong pic.twitter.com/AbmmFGAINi
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) June 17, 2026
That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao analyzes below.
The top teams usually bounce back after such mishaps, but Hexamind then lost again in round four.
Two losses in a row on the bottom board had been costly, which Giri had a day to forget, missing what should have been a nice win in round two and then losing a tough but saveable endgame in 74 moves to 21-year-old U.S. GM Andrew Hong to clinch a team win.
We’re only getting started, however, with two days and eight rounds to go. In Thursday’s round five at least one perfect record must end as Kazchess (Rapport) takes on Dragon Chilling (Ding), while it’s also My Birdie and friends (Artemiev) vs. WR Chess (Carlsen).
How to watch?
The 2026 FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships run June 17-21 in Hong Kong, with almost 50 teams of six players competing. Each team must feature at least one female player and one “recreational player,” who has never been rated 2000+. The Rapid is a 12-round Swiss with a time control of 15 minutes for all moves, plus a 10-second increment per move. The Blitz (3+2) begins with teams playing a round-robin in pools, before the top 16 play a knockout, where each clash features two mini-matches.
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