Best Chess Players in the World

The top 10 right now

FIDE, the world chess federation, publishes a new rating list on the first day of every month. The table is the standard (classical) list dated 1 September 2026, the one used for world rankings. The source is the official FIDE top lists page.

Three facts from the table: the gap from first to tenth is 66 points; Carlsen is the only player above 2800; and places two to ten are packed into 35 points, from 2792 down to 2757, so one tournament can move a player several places, as Praggnanandhaa's climb from 12th to 8th in August shows. By country, the USA has three of the ten, Uzbekistan and India two each, and Norway, Germany and the Netherlands one each.

Just outside: Alireza Firouzja of France is 11th on 2757, the same rating as Giri, who is listed above him because he played more games in August. Wei Yi of China is 12th on 2752, Jan-Krzysztof Duda of Poland 13th on 2743, Viswanathan Anand 14th on 2739, Amin Tabatabaei of Iran 15th on 2737, and Ding Liren, world champion until December 2024, 16th on 2733.

What changed in August

Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu gained 11 points, from 2750 to 2761, and climbed from 12th to 8th, which makes him India's No. 1. He was second at the Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis on tiebreak, then won the Grand Chess Tour Finals there on 27 August, beating Caruana 15-13 in the final, and with it the 2026 tour title.

Wesley So won the Sinquefield Cup, his third, with 5.5 out of 9 after a tiebreak against Praggnanandhaa, then took third place at the tour finals by beating Vincent Keymer 18-12. He gained 9 points, moved from 6th to 5th and is back in the top five for the first time in almost four years. Keymer lost 3 points and dropped to 6th, still the highest-ranked European after Carlsen. Caruana, tied fifth at the Sinquefield Cup and runner-up at the finals, lost 3 points and dropped from joint second to third, so Nakamura, unchanged on 2792, is No. 2 alone. Giri finished ninth at the Sinquefield Cup, lost 7 points and fell from 7th to 10th.

Carlsen's 2823 did not change, because he played no rated classical game in August: his FIDE profile shows no standard games in the periods behind the August and September lists, and his last rated event was Norway Chess, which took him from 2841 on the June list to 2823 on the July list. His August win was the Esports World Cup in Paris on 15 August, where he beat Denis Lazavik 3-1 in both final sets without losing a game; Nakamura took third place there after beating Firouzja 4-1. Further down, Amin Tabatabaei gained 11 points in the Turkish Super League and rose from 20th to 15th.

The world champion is ranked 32nd

The best-rated player and the world champion are two different people, and in 2026 they are far apart. Gukesh Dommaraju of India won the title in December 2024 at 18, the youngest champion the game has had. His rating peaked at 2794 in October 2024; on the September 2026 list he stands at 2703, 32nd in the world and second on the junior list, 120 points behind Carlsen.

He defends the title against Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan, world No. 4 on 2778, in Geneva in November and December 2026. Sindarov earned the match by winning the 2026 Candidates Tournament, whose eight players were Nakamura, Caruana, Giri, Praggnanandhaa, Wei Yi, Sindarov, Andrey Esipenko and Matthias Bluebaum; he had qualified for it by winning the 2025 World Cup. Carlsen, the No. 1, gave up the title in 2023 and does not play for it. So the rating list answers "who is strongest" and the title answers "who won the match", and the two ladders only sometimes agree. The dates, format and both players' records are on the World Chess Championship 2026 page.

Women's top 10

FIDE publishes a separate women's standard list every month from the same ratings. Hou Yifan of China leads it on 2596, 43 points ahead of Ju Wenjun, and five of the ten play for China. Three players share 2536 in places five to seven, and Koneru Humpy and Polina Shuvalova share 2509 in places nine and ten; FIDE counts players on the same rating as sharing the place, and the table follows the order on FIDE's list.

Ju Wenjun, second on the list, is the women's world champion: she beat Tan Zhongyi 6.5-2.5 in their match in April 2025 for her fifth title. Tan Zhongyi won the 2026 Cairns Cup in Saint Louis in August, gained 16 points and returned to the top five after seven months outside it. Hou Yifan's 2596 is below the open list's 100th place, which is 2628.

Junior top 10

The junior list covers players under 20. Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus of Turkey leads it on 2716, which is 26th on the open list; Gukesh, the world champion, is second on 2703. Neither played a rated game in August. They are the only two juniors above 2700, and India has four of the ten.

The girls list is led by Anastasiia Hnatyshyn of Ukraine on 2463, 19th on the women's list, ahead of Alua Nurman of Kazakhstan on 2455 and Deekshitha Modipalli of India on 2454. Alice Lee of the USA is fourth on 2453 after her second place at the Cairns Cup, which gained her 23 points and her first grandmaster norm.

India's players in the world rankings

India has 15 players in the open top 100, one fewer than the USA and more than twice China's seven. Three are in the top 20: Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu 8th, Arjun Erigaisi 9th and Viswanathan Anand 14th. The table gives every Indian player in the top 50 of the open list and the top 25 of the women's list, with the rank on that list.

Six more Indians are in the open top 100: Pentala Harikrishna 67th on 2648, Murali Karthikeyan 68th on 2647, Aryan Chopra 70th on 2646, Raunak Sadhwani 72nd on 2645, Leon Luke Mendonca 85th on 2633 and Abhimanyu Puranik 98th on 2629.

On the junior list India holds four of the top ten and seven of the top 20: Gukesh 2nd, Pranav V 3rd, Pranesh M 4th, Leon Luke Mendonca 7th, Aditya Mittal 14th on 2610, Pranav Anand 16th on 2606 and Bharath Subramaniyam 17th on 2605. On the girls list Deekshitha Modipalli is 3rd on 2454, Kalyani Sirin 7th on 2401, Pratitee Bordoloi 8th on 2393 and Savitha Shri 9th on 2382. Modipalli gained 297 points in one month, 175 at the Pontevedra Masters and 122 at the Leca Chess Open, the biggest gain FIDE has recorded since it began publishing its monthly gain reports.

Beyond the top 10

1. 1.The 2700 club: 32 players are rated 2700 or more on the September 2026 list, and 33rd place is 2697. Place 100 needs 2628.
2. 2.Countries: the USA has 16 players in the top 100, India 15, China 7, Russia 7, and Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan 5 each. FIDE's federation ranking, the average of each country's best ten, has the USA first on 2725, India second on 2705, China third on 2664 and Germany fifth on 2629.
3. 3.Former champions on the list: Viswanathan Anand is 14th on 2739, Ding Liren 16th on 2733, and Ian Nepomniachtchi, who played the title matches of 2021 and 2023, 23rd on 2719.

All-time greats

Ratings only reach back to 1971, when FIDE adopted the Elo system, so the all-time list is argued from titles, dominance and how long a player stayed on top. These eight are on every version of it, oldest first.

1. 1.Wilhelm Steinitz, champion 1886 to 1894: winner of the first match recognised as a world championship, against Johannes Zukertort in 1886.
2. 2.Emanuel Lasker, champion 1894 to 1921: held the title for 27 years, the longest reign, and won six championship matches, a record he shares with Karpov and Kasparov.
3. 3.José Raúl Capablanca, champion 1921 to 1927: took the title from Lasker and drafted the London Rules that governed how later matches were arranged.
4. 4.Bobby Fischer, champion 1972 to 1975: beat Boris Spassky in 1972, was the first player rated over 2700, and peaked at 2785 in July 1972.
5. 5.Anatoly Karpov, champion 1975 to 1985 and FIDE champion 1993 to 1999: six championship match wins and a peak of 2780 in July 1994.
6. 6.Garry Kasparov, champion 1985 to 2000: the first player to reach 2800, in 1990; his 2851 of July 1999 stood as the record rating until Carlsen passed it.
7. 7.Viswanathan Anand, champion 2000 to 2002 and 2007 to 2013: India's first world champion, a peak of 2817 in March 2011, and still 14th in the world.
8. 8.Magnus Carlsen, champion 2013 to 2023: the highest rating ever recorded, 2882 in May 2014; took the title from Anand, defended it four times, declined to defend in 2023, and is still No. 1 in 2026.

Five of the eight are on film: Fischer in Pawn Sacrifice and Bobby Fischer Against the World, Capablanca as himself in Chess Fever, Karpov in Closing Gambit, Kasparov in Game Over, about his 1997 match against IBM's Deep Blue, and Carlsen in Magnus. All six films are in our guide to the best chess movies.

How ratings work and when the list updates

A FIDE rating is an Elo number, named after the physicist Arpad Elo, who designed the system. It predicts results: the gap between two ratings gives the expected score when they play. In FIDE's table a player 100 points higher is expected to score about 64 per cent, 200 points higher 76 per cent, 400 points higher 92 per cent. After every rated game the rating moves by a share of the difference between the expected score and the real one, so a win against a stronger player is worth more than a win against a weaker one.

The size of that share is the K-factor. FIDE uses K = 40 for a new player's first 30 games and for players below 2300 through the year of their 18th birthday, K = 20 below 2400, and K = 10 once a player has reached 2400. Every player in the top 10 is on K = 10, so one game moves them by at most 10 points. A rating gap of more than 400 points counts as 400 for players rated under 2650, so one win, even against a far stronger opponent, is worth at most 0.92 times K: about 37 points on K = 40 and 18 on K = 20. FIDE computes the new list from the games reported in a month and publishes it on the first day of the next month; a tournament can be rated on a list when it ends three or more days before the list date. This page follows the list dated 1 September 2026, and the next one is due on 1 October.

FIDE keeps three separate lists for standard, rapid and blitz chess and publishes all of them monthly. "World No. 1" without a qualifier means the standard list. Carlsen leads all three in September 2026, with 2823 standard, 2803 rapid and 2860 blitz, and Hou Yifan leads all three women's lists with 2596, 2529 and 2521. A game counts for the standard list only with enough thinking time: at least 60 minutes per player for a 60-move game when both players are rated under 1800, 90 minutes when either is rated 1800 or higher, and 120 minutes when either is rated 2400 or higher. A rating of 2500 is the level required for the grandmaster title, along with three tournament performances called norms. 2700 is the informal line for the world elite, and 2800 is rare: only 15 players have ever reached it, and on the September 2026 list only Carlsen is there.

Gaps at the top are smaller than they look. Carlsen's 31-point lead over Nakamura is an expected score of about 54 per cent, close to a coin toss. The 120 points between Carlsen and Gukesh are an expected two points in every three, which is why a lower-rated champion is unusual but not a shock.

How to get and check your own FIDE rating

Only games from tournaments that a national federation submits to FIDE are rated, so the first step is to play in a FIDE-rated tournament. FIDE publishes your first rating once you have results from at least five games against rated opponents; the games can come from several tournaments played within 26 months, and a score of zero in your first event is disregarded. The first rating must be at least 1400 and cannot be above 2200. From then on you are on K = 40 until you have completed events with 30 games, and a rating that falls under 1400 is shown as unrated on the next list.

To check any rating, search the player's name on ratings.fide.com. A profile shows the FIDE ID, federation, title, the standard, rapid and blitz ratings with the world rank on each list, and a month-by-month history with the number of rated games in each period. Carlsen's profile, ID 1503014, shows 2823 standard, 2803 rapid and 2860 blitz, rank 1 on all three, and no standard games in the two periods behind the August and September lists. The monthly list publishes every player at 1400 or above with FIDE title, federation, rating, ID number, games rated in the period, year of birth, gender and the current K-factor.

What a beginner can copy from the top players

The top ten are separated from club players by calculation and memory that take a decade to build. Three of their habits transfer on day one.

1. 1.They play a small set of openings they know well. Carlsen is famous for switching lines, but each line he picks is one he understands to the last move. Pick one first opening from the best chess openings for beginners and drill it move by move on the opening trainers. Bobby Fischer opened 1.e4 almost without exception and played the Sicilian Defense and the King's Indian Defense as Black; Anatoly Karpov made the Caro-Kann Defense his main answer to 1.e4.
2. 2.They do not leave pieces undefended. A grandmaster game is decided by a plan; a beginner game is decided by a piece left where it can be taken for free. The scan that stops that is plan three on chess strategies for beginners.
3. 3.They review their games. Every player on the list studies their own losses after the event. Paste one of your games into the free analysis board and find the move where the position turned.

The fourth habit is the number of games played: the rating history on every top-10 FIDE profile is built tournament by tournament over years, and Carlsen's own profile lists 10 standard, 8 rapid and 19 blitz rated games behind the July 2026 list alone. Zapp Chess is built for volume: every game starts from a curated middlegame position with the pieces already developed, and the winner is the first to go two points of material ahead or give checkmate. Install the free app for Android or iPhone to play.

Best chess players FAQ

Ratings and rankings on this page are from the FIDE standard rating list dated 1 September 2026, read on the official FIDE top lists page and FIDE player profiles on 10 September 2026. Rating rules are from the FIDE Rating Regulations. Peak ratings and championship years are from FIDE's historical lists. The list changes on the first of every month.