World Chess Championship

The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. The current world champion is Ding Liren, who defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi in the 2023 World Chess Championship after the previous champion Magnus Carlsen had declined to defend his title. Liren is presently defending his title against Gukesh Dommaraju in the 2024 World Chess Championship tournament.

The first event recognized as a world championship was the 1886 match between Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort, which was won by Steinitz, who became the first world champion. From 1886 to 1946, the champion set the terms, requiring any challenger to raise a sizable stake and defeat the champion in a match in order to become the new world champion. Following the death of reigning world champion Alexander Alekhine in 1946, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) took over administration of the World Championship, beginning with the 1948 tournament. From 1948 to 1993, FIDE organized a set of tournaments and matches to choose a new challenger for the world championship match, which was held every three years.

Before the 1993 match, then reigning champion Garry Kasparov and his championship rival Nigel Short broke away from FIDE, and conducted the match under the umbrella of the newly formed Professional Chess Association. FIDE conducted its own tournament, which was won by Anatoly Karpov, and led to a rival claimant to the title of World Champion for the next thirteen years until 2006. The titles were unified at the World Chess Championship 2006, and all the subsequent tournaments and matches have once again been administered by FIDE. Since 2014, the championship has settled on a two-year cycle, with championship matches conducted every even year. The 2020 and 2022 tournaments were postponed to 2021 and 2023 respectively because of the COVID-19 pandemic.^[1] The next tournament returned to the normal schedule and was held in 2024.

Emanuel Lasker was the longest serving World Champion, having held the title for 27 years, and holds the record for the most Championship wins with six along with Kasparov and Karpov. Though the world championship is open to all players, there are separate championships for women, under-20s and lower age groups, and seniors. There are also chess world championships in rapid, blitz, correspondence, problem solving, Fischer random chess, and computer chess.