Monaco Championship 2026: Levacic and Dornbusch claim titles
IM Damir Levacic and WGM Tatiana Dornbusch are newly crowned chess champions of еру Principality. The Monaco Chess Championship 2026, a 7-round Swiss tournament held from February 23 to March 1, brought together the country’s leading players with man and women competing in the same pool. The event not only determined the national titleholders but also finalized the selection of the teams representing Monaco at the upcoming Chess Olympiad. Open and women’s titles IM Damir Levacic emerged as the clear winner of the tournament, scoring 5.5/7 to secure the title of Monaco Champion 2026. Despite suffering a third-round defeat at the hands of top seed GM Amir Bagheri, Levacic finished strongly with three straight victories to clinch the title. Five players shared second place on 5 points, reflecting the highly competitive nature of the championship: GM Amir Bagheri Riccardo Costalonga GM Igor Efimov FM Alexis Cahen FM Patrice Verdier Tie-break criteria determined the final ranking among the players on equal points. WGM Tatiana Dornbusch secured the title of Women’s Champion of Monaco 2026, finishing as the highest-ranked female player with a score of 4.5/7. She edged out WIM Marija Zvereva who achieved the same score but had an inferior Buchholz-tiebreak. WCM Svetlana Berezovska and WCM Fiorina Berezovsky also completed solid tournaments. Complete final standings Monaco teams for the Chess Olympiad Based on the results of the national championship and selection criteria, the Monaco Chess Federation confirmed the following line-ups for the forthcoming Chess Olympiad: Open team IM Damir Levacic GM Amir Bagheri Riccardo Costalonga GM Igor Efimov FM Alexis Cahen Women’s team WGM Tatiana Dornbusch WIM Marija Zvereva WCM Svetlana Berezovska WCM Fiorina Berezovsky WIM Julia Lebel (82) The composition of both teams combines experienced titled players with motivated competitors, aiming to represent Monaco with strength and stability on the international stage.
FIDE March 2026 Rating List – Correction
According to Article 0.2.1 of the FIDE Rating Regulations, a tournament and its playing schedule must be registered: 0.2.1 Not later than 30 days before the tournament starts, if one of the players in the tournament is rated in excess of 2700, or a female player rated in excess of 2500. Due to an oversight in the approval process, the Russian Chess Crown match was included in the March 2026 FIDE Rating List in breach of these regulations. Once the error was identified, the Qualification Commission (QC) removed the event from the FIDE Rating System in accordance with the applicable rules. As a result, Sergey Karjakin’s status has been changed to inactive, and he has been removed from the list of active players in the FIDE rating list. The FIDE Qualification apologises for any issues this may have caused with the release of the new rating list, and will work at improving the approval process in the future. The current standard rating list is available here: https://ratings.fide.com/top_lists.phtml?list=open