The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour was a series of Chess960 tournaments in 2025 organized by Freestyle Chess Operations. It consisted of five "Grand Slam" tournaments following a format similar to the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge, held in 2024. Players scored points based on placement in each event, with the player with the highest score at the end of the year becoming the Freestyle Chess Champion.
The final event of the tour was held in Cape Town, South Africa, in December 2025. Levon Aronian went undefeated, beating Magnus Carlsen to win the event. Due to his performance in previous rounds, Carlsen, who won two of the five events, was the overall winner of the tour. The top six players — Carlsen, Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Vincent Keymer, Javokhir Sindarov, and Arjun Erigaisi — qualified to the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship 2026.
Background The tour was co-founded by five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and German investor Jan Henric Buettner. Carlsen has been an advocate for Chess960 as an alternative to classical chess that eliminates opening preparation and theory due to its randomized starting positions. While previous Chess960 tournaments largely utilized rapid time controls, Carlsen proposed using slower time controls, believing the variant requires more time for thought.
Carlsen reportedly pitched his idea of a Chess960 tournament using slower time controls to Buettner when they met at the Qatar Masters Open in 2023. "Freestyle Chess" was devised as a more marketable name for the variant, and in February 2024, the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge was held in Buettner's Weissenhaus resort. Following the event, plans were announced for a tour spanning multiple continents, starting with an event in India in November and further events in Weissenhaus, New York, Cartagena and Cape Town in 2025, and Australia in 2026. In April 2024, the event in India was revealed to have been put on hold.
In July 2024, Left Lane Capital invested $12 million in the venture. By October 2024, dates were confirmed for three events in Weissenhaus in February, New York in July and Cape Town in December. The prize fund for each event was set to be $750,000, with plans to raise it to $1 million for future events.
Launch Event
On November 21 and 22, Carlsen played a two-game Chess960 exhibition match with Fabiano Caruana in Singapore, ahead of the World Chess Championship 2024 between Ding Liren and Gukesh Dommaraju that would take place in the same city. The first game was played on a yacht, while the second took place at Le Freeport. Carlsen won the first game and drew the second, winning 1½-½.
The event also consisted of a hand and brain match which was played on November 20, wherein Carlsen and Caruana were the "brains", and teamed up with Tania Sachdev and Maurice Ashley, who were the "hands", respectively; Carlsen and Sachdev won the match 2–0.
Format
Play-ins One player qualifies to each Grand Slam via an online play-in held on Chess.com. The play-ins consist of three stages:
Eligible non-titled players compete in two nine-round Swiss qualifiers, with a time control of 10+2. The top three players in each qualifier advance to the next stage. Titled players and the six qualifiers compete in a nine-round Swiss, with a time control of 10+2. The top four players advance to the next stage. 12 players are invited by the organizers to the single-elimination knockout stage, joined by the four qualifiers. Matches consist of two games, with a time control of 15+3. If the match ends in a tie, two 5+2 blitz games are played. If a tie persists, one armageddon game with bidding is played. The winner of the knockout stage qualifies to the Grand Slam.
Grand Slams The format of the Grand Slams underwent multiple changes, involving the players themselves in a democratic process but also motivated through better mainstream marketability.
Each grand slam begins with a rapid round-robin stage. The time control for the round-robin stage is 10 minutes with an increment of 10 seconds per move. No draw offers are allowed until move 40.
All eliminated players are required to perform commentary for the knockout stage. Refusal to do so results in a 50% reduction of their prize money.
In all matches, no draw offers are allowed until after move 40. The higher-seeded player starts the match with black in the first game. In the event of a tie, the tiebreak is two 10+10 rapid games followed by two 5+2 blitz games if the tie persists, and then one armageddon game with bidding.
Weissenhaus and Paris Grand Slam: Single-Elimination The first grand slam had 10 participants. Afterwards, the number of participants was increased to 12 for the following grand slam.
The players finishing 1–8 in the round robin stage qualified for the single-elimination classical time control stage, with players 1-4 being seeded. Starting with player 1, they choose their opponent for the quarter finals from players 5–8. In the semifinals, the winners of the quarterfinals involving players 1 and 4 faced each other, while the winners of the quarterfinals involving players 2 and 3 played the other match. The losers from the quarter-finals determined their final rankings in a fifth-place play-off, while losers from the semi-finals met in a third-place play-off.
The players finishing 9–12 in the round robin stage played a separate single-elimination classical time control stage for 9th place. Similar to above, players 9 and 10 were seeded with player 9 choosing their opponent from players 11 and 12. The winners played a match for 9th place, while the losers finished in a joint 11th place.
Each match in the classical time control stage was a best of two games. The time control was 90 minutes with an increment of 30 seconds per move.
New Double-Elimination Format Starting with the fourth leg, the format underwent a significant change.
The overall schedule was shortened by one day. For that, all matches were changed to rapid time control with one match taking a single day.
The players will be split into two groups for the round-robin stage.
In the elimination stage, all losing players continue playing after their first loss, opening the possibility to still play for third place.
Prize money and qualification methods Only the winner of the play-ins qualifies, the rest of the participants are determined by other qualification criteria and wildcards. For the final grand slam, the 12 players with the most accumulated grand slam points up to that point are qualified.
Prize money is awarded as follows: PlacePrize money (Leg 1)Prize money (Legs 2-4 and Final)1st$200,000$200,0002nd$140,000$140,0003rd$100,000$100,0004th$60,000$60,0005th$50,000$50,0006th$40,000$40,0007th$30,000$30,0008th$20,000$20,0009th$12,500$15,00010th$7,500$10,00011thn/a$7,500
In leg 1, there were only 10 participants. In legs 2-4 and the grand slam final, two players finish in a joint 11th place.
The winner of the Tour received $100,000, with $50,000 for second place and $25,000 for third.
The scoring system over the whole tour is described in below.
Schedule DatesHost cityWinnerRunner-upThird placeFebruary 7–14 Wangels Vincent Keymer Fabiano Caruana Magnus CarlsenReportApril 8–15 Paris Magnus Carlsen Hikaru Nakamura Fabiano CaruanaReportApril 17–21 Karlsruhe Magnus Carlsen Parham Maghsoodloo Andrey Esipenko Frederik SvaneReportJuly 16–20 Las Vegas Levon Aronian Hans Niemann Magnus CarlsenReportDecember 8–11 Cape Town Levon Aronian Magnus Carlsen Vincent Keymer
While a Grand Slam was originally scheduled to take place in Delhi from September 17 to 24, Buettner stated in an interview that the venue might be changed due to lack of investor interest. As of April 18, the Delhi event was no longer listed on the official website. Buettner confirmed on June 26 that the Delhi event was cancelled.
On April 11, Buettner announced that the fourth Grand Slam, originally set for New York, would be moved to Las Vegas, and be reduced to a five-day event with a shorter time control and more games per day.
Additionally, it was announced that at least one Grand Slam per calendar will be an open tournament, beginning with the Grenke Freestyle Chess Open on April 17–21, 2025 that replaced the Classic tournament at the annual Grenke Chess Festival.
Standings Scoring system Grand slam points are awarded to the top ten players in each Grand Slam as well as the 2025 Grenke Freestyle Chess Open. In the Grand Slam Final, double points are awarded. Points awarded 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th Grand Slam Legs 1–4251815121086421Grand Slam Final50363024201612842Source:
Tour Standings PlayerWangelsParisKarlsruheLas VegasCape TownTotal points Leg1 Leg2 Leg 3 Leg4 Final 1 Magnus Carlsen3rd1st1st3rd2nd 121 2 Levon Aronian9thDNQ33rd1st1st84 3 Fabiano Caruana2nd3rd7th5th5th73 4 Vincent Keymer1st4th13th9th3rd71 5 Javokhir Sindarov4thDNQ12th9th4th46 5 Arjun Erigaisi5th7th6th6th46 7 Hikaru Nakamura5th2nd4th WD40 8 Hans NiemannDNQ WD33rd2nd7th30 9 Parham MaghsoodlooDNQDNQ2nd WD8th26 10 Frederik SvaneDNQ3rd15 10 Andrey EsipenkoDNQ3rdDNQ15 12 Nodirbek Abdusattorov6th8th9th14 13 Leinier Dominguez PerezDNQDNQ5th9th12 14 Alexey SaranaDNQDNQ5thDNQ10 15 R PraggnanandhaaDNQ9th7th8 15 Maxime Vachier-LagraveDNQ6th19thDNQ8 17 Ian NepomniachtchiDNQ7th26thWD6 17 Alireza Firouzja7th WD6 19 Gukesh Dommaraju8th11th WD4 19 Wesley So 14th8th4 21 Rauf MamedovDNQ9th2 22 Leon MendoncaDNQ10thDNQ1 22 Vladimir Fedoseev10th WDDNQ1 22 Richárd Rapport10th14th1 25 Vidit GujrathiDNQ11th13th0 25 Bibisara Assaubayeva 46th13th0 25 Ray Robson 19th13th0 25 Sam Sevian 13th0 25 Viswanathan Anand WD0Only players who qualified for at least one grand slam or scored at least one point in an open tournament are listed.Sources: Key Colour Result Gold Winner Silver Second place Bronze Third place Green Other points position Blue Non-scoring position Purple Did not qualify (DNQ) White Qualified for upcoming event (Q) Blank Withdrawn (WD) Did not participate (empty cell)
Dispute with FIDE
On December 21, 2024, the Freestyle Chess Players Club issued a press release on Twitter stating an agreement on a "friendly co-existence" with FIDE, and ongoing discussions "regarding the mutual recognition of future World Championship titles". FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich replied stating that the press release "includes significant inaccuracies that mispresent the situation" and that FIDE will issue a further statement on the matter. Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik questioned the recognition of "a private event (with all respect) as official WC", and the involvement of Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Chess.com, and exclusion of World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, in the agreement.
On December 27, in an interview with Levy Rozman after withdrawing from the World Rapid Championship over a dress code dispute, Carlsen accused FIDE of "going after players to get them not to sign with Freestyle" and "threatening them that they wouldn't be able to play the World Championship Cycle if they played in Freestyle". Carlsen's claims were supported by Nakamura. FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky denied the claims on Twitter, stating "the claim that FIDE threatened players who were willing to participate in Freestyle Chess Tour is a lie" and "the only thing we insisted on - no Series or Tour can be called World Championship unless FIDE approves it. FIDE is the governing body of chess, and any World Championship should either be conducted or approved by FIDE".