The FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026 is an eight-player double round-robin chess tournament scheduled to take place between March 25 and May 1, 2026, to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship 2026 against reigning champion D. Gukesh. Organized by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), the tournament follows a revamped qualification system introduced in 2024, that follows a merit-based qualification pathways through major events, ratings, and the FIDE Circuit. Unlike any other Candidates Tournaments, there is no automatic spot for the runner-up of the previous Championship (Ding Liren).
Information: Candidates Chess 2026 information / Candidates 2026 in Cyprus
Nodirbek Yakubboev is one of the final eight players surviving the knockout competition, together with Jose Martinez Alcantara, Donchenko, Esipenko, Shankland, Sindarov, Wei Yi, and Arjun Erigaisi. Today he played game 1 of his FIDE World Chess Cup 2025 quarterfinal and defeated Donchenko with the white pieces. Yakubboev started the FIDE World Cup at 37th position in the Top 100 rating list with 2689 elo. His games so far added enough points for Nodirbek Yakubboev to enter the 2700 club
Nodirbek Yakubboev was born in Tashkent on 23 January 2002. He has won the Uzbekistani Chess Championship three times in 2016, 2018 and 2020. Yakubboev came second in the Zone 3.4 Zonal Open Championship in 2021, qualifying for the Chess World Cup 2021, and is currently making history in the same competition in 2025.
In 2022, he won the gold medal at the 44th Chess Olympiad in Chennai with the Uzbekistan team, playing in 2nd board, where he won the individual bronze medal, scoring eight points out of eleven and having a performance rating of 2,759.
In 2023 he won the Qatar Masters tournament in a tie-break playoff against fellow Uzbek Nodirbek Abdusattorov. In June 2024, Yakubboev participated in the UzChess Cup Masters, finishing first ahead of Nodirbek Abdusattorov on tiebreaks. He scored 5½/9 (+2-0=7), winning the tournament as the bottom-seeded player. The same year he won the Abu Dhabi Masters, signaling a great uptick in the year 2025.
