Chess Olympiad 2026 Team Tracker: Every Squad, Confirmed and Awaited

[Update: 09.08.2026] 

FIDE has published official line-ups for all 400 teams heading to Samarkand — and the biggest news isn't a new name, it's a new board number. On 5 August, FIDE confirmed the submitted team sheets for every federation across both sections, five weeks before the opening ceremony and roughly three weeks earlier than the "end of August" timeline we'd been pointing to since this tracker began. That single release resolves most of what this page has been listing as open for months, and reshuffles two of the favourites in the process.

The headline reshuffle: Gukesh Dommaraju, who produced one of the great individual Olympiad performances in Budapest on board one, moves to board four for Samarkand. Arjun Erigaisi leads India instead. Host nation Uzbekistan has swapped its own order too — Javokhir Sindarov now plays ahead of Nodirbek Abdusattorov. Neither move was previewed in any federation statement we'd tracked; both are visible only in FIDE's own published sheets.

The other headline is an absence rather than a name. Magnus Carlsen is not on Norway's list. The question that has hung over this tracker's Norway entry since May is now answered, and not in Norway's favour — the team is seeded 21st, a long way from the podium finishes of Carlsen's best years.

This page tracks all of it in one place, team by team, section by section. We update it as the announcements land, newest first; earlier updates are collapsed below.

One thing that changes from every earlier version of this page: the seeding note below is now obsolete. FIDE's official seeding is published — the order in this update reflects it directly, not our own July-list ranking. Where the FIDE release names a full five-board line-up, we mark the team Confirmed regardless of what status it carried in earlier updates. Where FIDE's release is silent on a federation below the leading tier, we keep the status from the last update we could verify.

On this page

• How to read the tracker
• Open section — the top twenty
• Women's section — the top twenty
• The shadow over the start list
• What we're still waiting on
• Sources

How to read the tracker

Each team carries one of four labels:

• Confirmed — the federation has officially named its squad, and we have it from a source we can point to. Boards may still be juggled, but the five names are set.
• Announced — a squad exists and has been reported, but we haven't yet matched it to the federation's own publication. We say so rather than print names we can't stand behind.
• Partial — some players are publicly locked in, the rest of the boards open.
• Awaiting — no official squad yet. We list the likely pool and the selection mechanism, and flag it as unconfirmed rather than guess a lineup.

Where we are leaning on secondary reporting rather than a source we have read ourselves, we say so in italics at that entry rather than burying it in the notes at the bottom. That flag is not a doubt about the names; it marks the difference between what we have verified and what we have taken on trust.

Full player cards for every nation — flags, ratings, captains, and historical results — live on the Samarkand 2026 hub, which we keep in step with this tracker as squads firm up.

Open section — the top twenty

1. India — Confirmed, board order now known

Update 09.08: FIDE's 5 August line-up release settles the question this entry left open two weeks ago — and the answer is a genuine surprise. Board order for Samarkand:

• Arjun Erigaisi — board 1
• R Praggnanandhaa — board 2
• Nihal Sarin — board 3
• Gukesh Dommaraju — board 4
• Vidit Gujrathi — board 5
• Captain: Srinath Narayanan

Gukesh produced a 3056 performance rating on board one in Budapest — individual gold, one of the great Olympiad boards of the modern era — and captain Narayanan has moved him down three places. Board four brings weaker average opposition but also less exposure if the very top boards misfire on a given day; whether that reads as a demotion or a tactical reshuffle depends on who you ask, and we haven't seen the federation explain the reasoning. Erigaisi now carries the top board. Praggnanandhaa, still the form player after winning Norway Chess in June, moves to two. We laid out the data case for and against India defending in The Champion's Curse — written before this reorder, worth an update once the tournament starts.

2. United States — Confirmed

• Fabiano Caruana
• Wesley So
• Levon Aronian
• Hans Niemann (Olympiad debut)
• Awonder Liang (Olympiad debut)
• Captain: IM John Donaldson · Trainer: GM Grigory Oparin

Hikaru Nakamura is absent again by choice, and Leinier Domínguez was left out despite outrating two of the players picked ahead of him — a selection built on recent activity over raw rating. We told that story, and its 1930s echo, in America's Samarkand squad and the ghost of a golden age.

Update 09.08: Nakamura has spoken more directly than in previous cycles about why he's skipping Samarkand, citing appearance-fee levels as a factor. It's the clearest first-person reason he's given for sitting out an Olympiad since 2018 — earlier absences were reported as "by choice" without much elaboration from him directly. We're not printing the specific figure he cited on stream; the general point stands without it.

3. Uzbekistan — Confirmed, boards reversed

Update 09.08: FIDE's line-up release reorders the hosts' top two from every earlier announcement this tracker has recorded:

• Javokhir Sindarov — board 1 (up from board 2)
• Nodirbek Abdusattorov — board 2 (down from board 1)
• Nodirbek Yakubboev
• Shamsiddin Vokhidov
• Mukhiddin Madaminov

No federation statement flagged this coming; it's visible only in FIDE's published sheet. Sindarov carries the heavier subplot regardless of board number — two months after the Olympiad, he plays Gukesh for the world title, and leading the home team puts him under a home crowd's full attention while doing it. One open item: we have seen the captain named as Rustam Kasimdzhanov in some coverage of this release, which conflicts with our own earlier reporting (in Uzbekistan's Golden Generation and From Chennai to Samarkand) that Ivan Sokolov returned as head coach in 2025. The two roles — captain and head coach — are not necessarily the same job, so this may not be a contradiction at all; we're not resolving it here without a source that states both roles explicitly. As host, Uzbekistan fields three teams in the section; this is the one that can medal.

4. China — Confirmed

• Wei Yi (Jiangsu)
• Ding Liren (Zhejiang)
• Yu Yangyi (Beijing)
• Xu Xiangyu (Sichuan)
• Kong Xiangrui (Hangzhou)

China's selection rules were published in March by the General Administration of Sport's Chess and Cards Centre, and they are unusually explicit: five players per section, four regulars plus a reserve, filled in a fixed order of priority — reigning world champion first, then the top three from the latest World Cup, then Candidates qualifiers, then one player rated 2700 or above on the 1 March list, then the national champion, then Asian champions, with any remaining places decided on form and training. The document set 30 June as the deadline for publishing the full squad.

Two names on this list can be traced straight back to that ladder. Xu Xiangyu won the 2026 national championship in Xinghua in May — eight and a half points from eleven rounds — and the tournament was billed in advance as carrying a direct Olympiad ticket for its winner. Kong Xiangrui finished half a point behind him, and takes the fifth place that the criteria leave to discretion.

The order on the sheet is the story: Wei Yi is listed first, Ding Liren second. The former world champion, whose withdrawal from competitive chess after losing the title in 2024 was one of the game's saddest recent chapters, returns to the Olympiad in a supporting role rather than as the anchor. China last won the Open in 2018 and has not medalled since.

5. Azerbaijan — Awaiting

A perennial top-ten seed. Likely pool:

• Teimour Radjabov
• Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
• Nijat Abasov
• Aydin Suleymanli

No official announcement yet.

6. Armenia — Awaiting

The 2006 and 2008 Open champions — still the last team to defend the title. Likely core:

• Gabriel Sargissian
• Haik Martirosyan

Squad not yet named.

7. Germany — Confirmed

• Vincent Keymer (world no. 6 on the July list)
• Matthias Blübaum
• Frederik Svane
• Alexander Donchenko
• Dmitrij Kollars

Announced on the schedule the federation always uses, roughly three months out. The side finished seventh in Budapest and has quietly become one of Europe's strongest. Note: one piece of secondary coverage of FIDE's 5 August release named Rasmus Svane instead of Kollars on board five. FIDE's own release confirms Kollars, matching our original sourcing above — we're treating that as settled and the other report as the error.

8. France — Confirmed

• Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
• Étienne Bacrot
• Maxime Lagarde
• Jules Moussard
• Marc'Andria Maurizzi
• Captain: GM Sébastien Mazé

Locked in back in May by national selector Laurent Fressinet, with Alireza Firouzja pointedly left out for a fifth straight year — and the federation stating publicly that he will not be called up again without a lasting commitment to the national side. We covered the squad, the century-long medal drought behind it, and the Firouzja standoff in A Century Without a Medal.

9. Netherlands — Awaiting

Likely top three:

• Anish Giri (world no. 7)
• Jorden van Foreest
• Max Warmerdam

No official squad yet.

10. Poland — Announced

Seeded 11th in the Open in Budapest. We are relying here on secondary coverage citing sports journalist Filip Zieliński, which reports both Polish squads as settled but which we have not been able to match against the federation's own publication — so we are not printing a five-name list. The established core:

• Jan-Krzysztof Duda
• Radosław Wojtaszek
• Mateusz Bartel

Full rosters to follow once verified at source.

11. Spain — Confirmed

• Daniil Yuffa
• David Antón
• Maksim Chigaev
• Jaime Santos
• Alexei Shirov (his 14th Olympiad)

The most human story of the selection season: Shirov, bound for a fourteenth Olympiad, was the name that turned heads. We traced his three-decade arc across the OlympChess database when Spain announced.

12. Hungary — Partial

Based on public statements by the team captain rather than a formal federation announcement, the named certainties are:

• Richárd Rapport
• Péter Lékó
• Benjámin Gledura
• (two boards still open)

As former hosts and a consistent top-ten side, Hungary's final shape is worth watching.

13. Vietnam — Awaiting

• Lê Quang Liêm (world no. 20 on the July list)

The clear leader; the rest of the squad depends on domestic selection. Not yet announced.

14. Ukraine — Awaiting

Vasyl Ivanchuk remains the emotional and often the sporting anchor, with a younger group behind him. As with the women's side, the war's disruption of Ukrainian chess is a factor no rating list fully captures. Squad not named.

15. England — Confirmed

• Nikita Vitiugov
• Michael Adams
• Gawain Jones
• Luke McShane
• Daniel Fernandez
• Captain: William Watson

The ECF Selection Committee named both teams in late June, with board orders left to the captains. Daniel Fernandez comes in for David Howell from the Budapest five. England is also one of the five federations formally challenging the reinstatement of Russian and Belarusian teams at CAS — a case that has now been partly overtaken by events (see below).

16. Serbia — Awaiting

The quiet climber of recent Olympiads. Our Open preview flagged Serbia as the team to watch just outside the medals if their ascent has one more step in it. Squad not yet published.

17. Argentina — Confirmed

• Faustino Oro (Olympiad debut)
• Diego Flores
• Sandro Mareco
• Fernando Peralta
• Federico Pérez Ponsa

Named back in March, and the headline is Oro — the teenage IM and one of the most-discussed young talents in the game, finally playing rather than travelling with the coaching staff.

18. Norway — Confirmed: Carlsen is not playing

Update 09.08: The question this entry has carried since May is answered. Magnus Carlsen is not on Norway's Samarkand roster. FIDE's seeding has the team down at 21st — a steep fall from the fifth-place finish Carlsen anchored at Baku 2016. We have not yet independently verified the other four names on Norway's sheet beyond what's carried in the FIDE release; full roster to confirm at source before we print it here.

19. Iran — Awaiting

Likely leaders:

• Parham Maghsoodloo
• Bardiya Daneshvar

A young, aggressive group. No official roster yet.

20. Czechia — Awaiting

Likely anchors:

• Thai Dai Van Nguyen
• David Navara

A solid top-ten European outsider. Squad not yet named.

Women's section — the top twenty

The Women's field behaves differently from the Open: one country, India, has pulled clear on paper, and the medal fight below it is tighter and more volatile — and it got more volatile still when China's published roster turned out not to be the team most people were penciling in. We made the full data case in Who Will Win the Women's Olympiad. As in the Open, the order below is our ranking by July-list strength, not an official seeding.

1. India — Confirmed

The defending champions and clear favourites, named on 23 July alongside the open side:

• Koneru Humpy
• Vaishali Rameshbabu — availability caveat below
• Divya Deshmukh
• Vantika Agrawal
• Savitha Shri B
• Captain: Swayams Mishra — reported in secondary Indian coverage, not confirmed in FIDE's own announcement

Two changes from the Budapest gold side: Humpy and Savitha Shri come in for Harika Dronavalli and Tania Sachdev. Divya, Vantika and Vaishali keep their places.

The one open thread is Vaishali. She won the 2026 Women's Candidates, which earns her a World Championship match against Ju Wenjun — and FIDE has still not confirmed the dates or host city of that match. If it falls inside the Olympiad window (15–27 September), her place on the Samarkand board is in doubt despite the selection. AICF has named her regardless, which suggests the federation is either working on the assumption the match falls elsewhere in the calendar or treating her inclusion as provisional. We flag it rather than resolve it, because the scheduling that decides it is not ours to see.

Update 09.08: One relevant fact from FIDE's 5 August release — Ju Wenjun is not on China's Olympiad roster (see China entry below). Whatever else that means for China's own team, it does mean Vaishali will not face her Olympiad-week opponent at the Olympiad itself. It doesn't resolve the underlying scheduling question, but it removes one specific collision.

2. China — Confirmed

• Zhu Jiner (Zhejiang)
• Song Yuxin (Shenzhen)
• Lu Miaoyi (Hangzhou)
• Zhai Mo (Hebei)
• Yan Tianqi (Hangzhou)

The surprise of the entire selection season, and a much bigger one than anything in the Open. Ju Wenjun, the reigning women's world champion, is not on the list. Neither are Lei Tingjie or Tan Zhongyi. China has named a young squad led by Zhu Jiner and left out three players who between them account for most of the country's recent title history.

Yan Tianqi's place is not in doubt. She won the women's national championship at Xinghua on the same day Xu Xiangyu won the men's, and Chinese state media reported both champions as having secured Olympiad selection on the spot — the criteria guarantee it.

The omissions are the harder question. China's own published rules place the reigning women's world champion first in the order of priority, ahead of everyone else. Ju Wenjun holds that title. We have the five-name list from secondary coverage of the association's announcement rather than the announcement itself, and an absence is always weaker evidence than a presence — a name reported is a name someone saw, whereas a name missing may simply not have been carried across. Set against that, the rules make her exclusion a deliberate act rather than an oversight, which is precisely why it would be significant.

We are printing the list because the reporting is specific and consistent with the two names we can verify independently. We are flagging it because a world champion's omission is exactly the kind of thing worth being wrong about carefully. If it holds, the federation has not explained it, we are not going to guess at reasons — and on raw rating this is a substantially weaker team than China could have fielded, which reshapes the medal maths below India.

Update 09.08: FIDE's own 5 August release confirms this roster directly — Ju Wenjun, Lei Tingjie and Tan Zhongyi are indeed absent from China's Olympiad team. What was secondary-sourced two weeks ago is now a primary confirmation. FIDE has not explained the omissions either; the "worth being wrong about carefully" caveat above no longer applies to the roster itself, only to the reasons behind it, which remain unstated.

3. Kazakhstan — Awaiting

Silver medallists in Budapest and no longer overachievers:

• Bibisara Assaubayeva — 2nd at the 2026 Candidates, won Norway Chess Women in June, career-high rating

Around her the squad is young and improving. Not yet announced.

4. United States — Confirmed

• Carissa Yip
• Alice Lee
• Irina Krush
• Rose Atwell (Olympiad debut)
• Tatev Abrahamyan (seventh Olympiad)
• Captain: GM Melikset Khachiyan · Trainer: GM Le Quang Liem

Yip, Lee and Krush return from the bronze-medal Budapest side.

5. Georgia — Awaiting

The most decorated women's chess nation in history. Likely core:

• Nana Dzagnidze
• Nino Batsiashvili
• Lela Javakhishvili

Perennial medal contenders; squad not yet published.

6. Ukraine — Awaiting

Gold medallists in Chennai 2022, 11th in Budapest.

• Anna Muzychuk — still world-class individually (played the 2026 Candidates; drew all nine classical games at Norway Chess Women)

Team depth has thinned under the war's disruption. No official squad.

7. Armenia — Awaiting

• Elina Danielian

A steady top-ten side. Not yet named.

8. Poland — Announced

Silver medallists as recently as 2016. As in the Open, Polish rosters have been reported as settled — we are relying here on secondary coverage citing journalist Filip Zieliński, which we have not yet matched to a federation publication — so we are not printing a five-name list. The established core:

• Oliwia Kiołbasa (individual board gold, Chennai 2022)
• Alina Kashlinskaya

9. Spain — Partial

• Sabrina Vega (European vice-champion, leads the squad)

The Spanish federation announced both sections together, but the coverage we have names only Vega on the women's side — the remaining four boards are treated as open here until we see the full list.

10. England — Confirmed

• Bodhana Sivanandan
• Lan Yao
• Jovanka Houska
• Harriet Hunt
• Elmira Mirzoeva
• Captain: Stuart Conquest

Named alongside the open side, with board orders left to the captain. Sivanandan is eleven. She was already the youngest person ever to represent England internationally in any sport when she played at Budapest 2024 at nine, and she reached the top of the English women's rating list in early 2026. Whether she takes board one is Conquest's call, but on rating she has earned it.

11. Bulgaria — Awaiting

• Nurgyul Salimova (2023 World Cup finalist)

One of the brightest talents in European women's chess. Not yet announced.

12. Azerbaijan — Awaiting

Likely leaders:

• Gunay Mammadzada
• Ulviyya Fataliyeva

Squad not named.

13. France — Confirmed

• Marie Sebag
• Deimante Daulyte-Cornette
• Sophie Milliet
• Pauline Guichard
• Manon Schippke
• Captain: IM Silvia Alexieva

Named in May at the same time as the open side, and overlooked in our earlier updates — the Firouzja row around the men's team swallowed the coverage.

14. Hungary — Awaiting

The former hosts field a solid top-ten side; squad not yet published.

15. Germany — Partial

• Elisabeth Pähtz (returning after maternity leave)

Announced alongside the open team, but the coverage that reached us named only Pähtz — she is the anchor around whom the rest is built. We are treating the remaining boards as open until we see the full list at source.

The chasing pack

Below the top fifteen, the women's field tightens fast — a single strong board can move a team five places. In the cluster, none with a published Samarkand squad:

• Mongolia
• Vietnam
• Uzbekistan (hosts — three teams, hoping the home crowd lifts them into the top ten for the first time)
• Netherlands
• Serbia

(We track the Women's field to a firm top fifteen plus this cluster, because below that the rating gaps between teams are smaller than the uncertainty in who actually plays. As squads firm up, this list will lengthen.)

The shadow over the start list

Half of the eligibility question is now settled, half is not — and the two halves are routinely collapsed into one story when they are not one story.

Belarus: resolved. On 21 July the FIDE Council lifted every restriction previously imposed on the Belarus Chess Federation, effective immediately. The stated basis is a recommendation from the IOC Executive Board adopted on 6–7 May 2026, which no longer advises restricting Belarusian athletes or teams in competitions run by international federations, and reaffirms the IOC's position that athletes should not be limited by the actions of their governments. FIDE's announcement is explicit about what follows: Belarusian players and official teams will compete under the national flag of Belarus, and the first major events where they do so are the Olympiad for People with Disabilities and the Olympiad itself, both in Samarkand this September.

Note what this is and isn't. It is a Council decision following an IOC recommendation — an administrative route, not a judicial one. No court ordered it, and it does not touch the Russian question at all.

Russia: unresolved, and tangled. Two separate proceedings are running. After a CAS ruling brought by the Ukrainian federation over chess activity in occupied territories, FIDE in June recognised the Chess Federation of Russia as suspended for three years or until it complies — but the same Council held that teams of Russian citizens may still be eligible for team events, a reading several Nordic and Baltic federations have publicly called inconsistent with FIDE's own statutes, which allow a suspended federation individual participants only. Under FIDE's statutes the General Assembly must still confirm the suspension, and it meets during the Olympiad itself. Separately, five federations (Ukraine, England, Norway, Estonia and Germany) are challenging the December 2025 decision to ease team restrictions on procedural grounds; that case was heard in mid-June and we have seen no published decision.

So: whether a Russian team plays in Samarkand, and under which flag, remains genuinely open, with a governing-body vote scheduled to happen mid-tournament. We are not going to present that as settled in either direction.

Update 09.08: FIDE's 5 August team-list release contains no Russian team in either section. That answers the practical question — no Russian flag on the start list as of now — but not the governance one. The General Assembly vote confirming the federation's suspension still falls during the Olympiad itself, and the five-federation procedural appeal at CAS is, as far as we can find, still without a published decision. A published roster is not a closed legal question; we're treating the absence as the current state of play, not the final word.

What we're still waiting on

Update 09.08: The first item below is done, three weeks ahead of the schedule we'd been quoting. Two remain:

• FIDE's official seeding — published 5 August, well ahead of "end of August." This tracker's rankings above now follow it directly rather than our own July-list ordering.
• The Women's World Championship dates — still the domino that decides whether Vaishali's Olympiad place holds, independent of the Ju Wenjun detail noted above. Still unset.
• The Russian question at governance level — a published team list without a Russian federation entry is not the same as a resolved CAS appeal or a confirmed General Assembly vote. Both are still open.

One further note on the field below the top twenty: Italy has published its rosters, as have Japan, Scotland, Monaco, Uganda, Botswana and Ghana. We have not yet cross-checked every one of those against FIDE's 5 August release; that reconciliation is worth a pass before the next update rather than folding it in here.

We update this page as each lands. The Samarkand 2026 hub carries the full player cards and everything else we publish on the 46th.

Sources

Read at source. All India Chess Federation squad announcement and the FIDE roster post of 23 July 2026 (India, both sections). English Chess Federation official selection announcement (England, June 2026). FIDE Council announcement of 21 July 2026 on fide.com, and the underlying IOC Executive Board recommendation of 6–7 May 2026 (Belarus). US Chess Federation (United States, June 2026).

Read at source, Chinese-language. The 46th Olympiad selection regulations (棋牌字〔2026〕63号), published 4 March 2026 by the General Administration of Sport's Chess and Cards Administrative Centre at sport.gov.cn — the source for China's selection ladder and its 30 June deadline. People's Daily and Xinhua coverage of the 2026 national individual championship at Xinghua (18 May 2026), confirming Xu Xiangyu and Yan Tianqi as champions and as Olympiad selections.

Taken from secondary reporting, flagged in the entries above. The Indian women's team captain (Swayams Mishra), from Indian press coverage not carried in FIDE's own announcement. China's full five-name rosters, from coverage of the Chinese Chess Association's official WeChat post; two of the ten names are independently confirmed by the national-championship reporting above. France, from Chess.com and Chess Topics reporting the federation's announcement via national selector Laurent Fressinet. Poland, from coverage citing sports journalist Filip Zieliński. Spain, from reporting of the Spanish federation's announcement. Germany and Argentina, from ChessBase and federation coverage. Uzbekistan, from Uzbekistan Chess Federation coverage. Hungary, from public statements by the team captain.

Russia. FIDE Council communications of June 2026 following the CAS ruling in the case brought by the Ukrainian Chess Federation; ChessBase's reporting on the partial suspension; public statements by the Nordic and Baltic federations; the pending joint CAS appeal by the Ukrainian, English, Norwegian, Estonian and German federations. Explicitly unresolved and hedged as such throughout.

Ratings and rankings. FIDE July 2026 rating list (fide.com) for teams whose board order predates the 5 August release. Pools and selection mechanisms for teams not yet announced are drawn from each federation's published criteria and recent national-team practice, and are flagged as unconfirmed throughout.

09 August update. FIDE, "Team line-ups confirmed for 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad," fide.com, 5 August 2026 — primary source for the India and Uzbekistan board-order changes, the Norway/Carlsen confirmation, the China women's roster confirmation, and the absence of a Russian team from the published lists. Full team lists: chessolympiad2026.fide.com/teams_open and /teams_women. Supplementary framing from Chess.com, "USA Top Seed Without Nakamura As India Prepares Olympiad Double-Gold Defense," 6 August 2026 — flagged separately where it conflicted with FIDE's own release (Germany, board five).

Compiled 19 July 2026. Updated 27 July 2026 with both India squads; 9 August 2026 with FIDE's official line-up release. Earlier updates (27 July: India; 23 July: Belarus, China, England, France; 8 July: Spain, Argentina) are collapsed above. This tracker is updated as federations announce and as FIDE publishes further detail.