The World Championship race restarts this Friday, and the door is still wide open.
Hamburg / Weissenhaus, October 1, 2026 – The race to the 2027 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship is back on. Freestyle Friday, the weekly online tournament on Chess.com, returns this Friday, October 2, streamed live on the Freestyle Chess YouTube channel, Chess.com and DAZN, with a direct ticket to Weissenhaus on the line in both the Open and the Women’s fields.
Six seats are still open, three in the Open and three in the Women’s field. Ten Fridays remain, and the standings can change fast.
“Formula One has its Grand Prix weekends. Chess now has its Fridays. With Freestyle Friday and our online qualifiers, the road to a World Championship becomes a season-long show. That’s the future of the game,” said Dr. Andreas Walker, CEO of Freestyle Chess.
Star power from day one
Olympiad champion Nodirbek Yakubboev, Hans Niemann, Denis Lazavik and Ian Nepomniachtchi are expected at the opening event. In the Women’s field, Anna Muzychuk and Alexandra Kosteniuk are among the players expected. More top names will join as the series goes on.
How to watch
Every Friday brings a live Freestyle Chess show, hosted by a top name who plays in the event while commentating. The line-up includes Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Hans Niemann, Vidit Gujrathi, Anna Cramling, Dina Belenkaya, Oleksandr Bortnyk, and Sagar Shah and Harshit Raja of ChessBase India.
Watch live every Friday at 17:00 Central European Time on channels including the Freestyle Chess YouTube channel, Chess.com, and DAZN.
How it works
Freestyle Friday runs weekly from October 2 to December 4. The top seven then play a knockout final: quarterfinals on December 11, semifinals and the final on December 18. The winner in each field goes to Weissenhaus.
Two more chances
Two further online qualification tournaments award the remaining four spots: two in the Open and two in the Women’s field. The first runs from November 29 to December 3, the second from January 3 to 7.
The destination
The Championships will be held at Weissenhaus Private Nature Luxury Resort on Germany’s Baltic coast. The Women’s Championship runs February 5–7, 2027, and the Open follows February 12–14, 2027.
Full regulations are available at https://www.freestyle-chess.com/.
About Freestyle Chess
Freestyle Chess brings more creativity to top-level chess. The pieces on the back rank are shuffled before each game, so memorized openings don’t help, and players have to think from move one. The FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship features the world’s best players to crown an official Freestyle world champion.