Chess Olympiad 2026 Team Tracker: Top Squads in Samarkand

A week before the first round in Samarkand, the waiting is over: every federation has registered, the official start lists are public, and this tracker no longer has a single "awaiting" entry in it. What it has instead is a correction — one that applies to almost everything written about these teams since early August, including on this page.

Update: 08.09.2026 — the board orders were never board orders

The single most-repeated fact about India's Samarkand squad is not a fact. Since FIDE published the team line-ups on 5 August, the story has travelled everywhere: reigning World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, individual gold medallist on board one at Budapest with a 3056 performance, has been dropped to board four. Arjun Erigaisi leads. A striking, unexplained call by captain Srinath Narayanan.

It is not a call at all. The official start list carries an instruction at the top of every page, and it says what the numbers mean:

Until captains are invited to submit their fixed board order in accordance with the Olympiad Regulations, team members are provisionally listed in descending rating order.

The "Bo." column is a sort, not a decision. No captain in either section has submitted a board order yet. Gukesh is fourth on India's sheet because four Indian players are rated above him, and for no other reason.

The proof arrived on its own. The list was refreshed on 5 September against the new FIDE rating list, and India's top two swapped without anybody touching anything:

• On the August list: Erigaisi 2759 first, Praggnanandhaa 2750 second.
• On the September list: Praggnanandhaa 2761 first, Erigaisi 2759 second.

Praggnanandhaa gained eleven points, retook the Indian number-one spot, and "took board one" from Erigaisi — in exactly the same way Erigaisi had "taken" it from Gukesh a month earlier. The United States sheet moved too: Levon Aronian and Hans Niemann are both on 2725, and the tie now resolves in Aronian's favour, so the "Niemann on board three ahead of Aronian" line from August has quietly reversed itself as well.

The same caveat empties out the other reshuffle story. Javokhir Sindarov is listed above Nodirbek Abdusattorov for Uzbekistan because he is rated 2778 to 2762. That is a real and significant change in Uzbek chess — Sindarov overtook his rival during 2026 — but it is a rating fact, not a selection decision, and it tells us nothing about who will sit where in round one.

We had this wrong in the 9 August update on this page, and we are not going to soften it: we described a sorted list as a captain's choice, on the strength of a FIDE press release that did the same. The correction is the news. Nobody knows India's board order yet, and nobody will until the captains file their sheets in Samarkand.

Two other things have changed since the last version of this page. The eligibility question closed on 23 August, when the FIDE Council rejected Russia's application to enter teams. And the field itself is now fixed: 208 teams in the Open, 190 in the Women's event, with three Uzbek teams in each as hosts.

Everything below has been rebuilt from the official start lists as they stood on 5 September, replacing the July-list rankings and federation announcements the earlier versions of this tracker were assembled from.

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 is still genuinely open
• Sources

How to read the tracker

Everything below comes from one place: the official Samarkand 2026 start lists, generated from the tournament's own pairing file and last refreshed on 5 September. Every name, rating, average and captain here is from that source. Where we add anything from elsewhere — a federation statement, a player's own words — we say so at that entry.

The old status labels this page used — Confirmed, Announced, Partial, Awaiting — have been retired. They described a season in which federations were still deciding; that season is over. All 398 teams are registered and every line-up is public.

Three things to keep in mind while reading:

The numbering inside each team is a rating sort, not a board order. This is worth repeating because it is the single easiest mistake to make with these lists, and most of the coverage of this Olympiad has made it. Captains submit fixed board orders in Samarkand. Until then, the player listed first is simply the highest rated.

The seeding, by contrast, is official. Teams are ranked by the average rating of their four highest-rated players, which is FIDE's own measure, and the order below follows it exactly. Where our own team-card pages differ by a place or two, the start list is the one to trust.

Ratings are the September 2026 list. They have moved since the August release most reporting was based on, and in a couple of cases they have moved enough to change who appears at the top of a team.

Full player cards for every nation — flags, ratings, captains and historical results — live on the Samarkand 2026 hub.

[ZDJĘCIE: Silk Road International Exhibition Centre in Samarkand, the Olympiad playing venue]

Open section — the top twenty

208 teams are registered, one more than the 207 that would make a round number and thirteen more than Budapest. Uzbekistan fields three as host; its second team is seeded 31st and its third 55th, which places both inside the top quarter of the field on their own. The four favourites are separated by 46 rating points in total, and the gap from fourth to fifth is larger than the gap from first to fourth.

1. United States — 2753

• Fabiano Caruana 2789
• Wesley So 2774
• Levon Aronian 2725
• Hans Niemann 2725
• Awonder Liang 2693
• Captain: IM John Donaldson · Trainer: GM Grigory Oparin

Top seed for the second Olympiad running, and again without Hikaru Nakamura, who has spoken more directly about his reasons this cycle than in previous ones, citing appearance-fee levels. Niemann and Liang both make their Olympiad debuts; Aronian and Niemann are tied on rating, which is why their order on the sheet has already flipped once. Donaldson captained the American team that won gold in Baku in 2016. We told the story of this selection, and its 1930s echo, in America's Samarkand squad and the ghost of a golden age.

2. India — 2735

• Praggnanandhaa R 2761
• Arjun Erigaisi 2759
• Nihal Sarin 2718
• Gukesh Dommaraju 2703
• Vidit Gujrathi 2697
• Captain: GM Srinath Narayanan

The defending champions, with four of the five who won in Budapest and Nihal Sarin coming in for Pentala Harikrishna. Praggnanandhaa arrives as the form player of the squad — Norway Chess in June, the Grand Chess Tour title in August — and has just retaken the Indian number-one ranking from Erigaisi by two points. Gukesh is the reigning World Champion and the lowest-rated but one of the five, which is a statement about the depth here rather than about him.

History is the obstacle. No country has successfully defended the Open title since Armenia won consecutive Olympiads in 2006 and 2008, and the last five editions have produced four different champions. We made the data case for and against a successful defence in The Champion's Curse.

3. Uzbekistan — 2720

• Javokhir Sindarov 2778
• Nodirbek Abdusattorov 2762
• Nodirbek Yakubboev 2685
• Shamsiddin Vokhidov 2654
• Mukhiddin Madaminov 2611
• Captain: GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov

The hosts, and on recent form the most dangerous team in the hall. Four of the five won gold in Chennai in 2022; Vokhidov took individual gold on board four in Budapest, where Uzbekistan finished third. Sindarov's overtaking of Abdusattorov at the top of the Uzbek list is real and recent, and he carries the heavier subplot into the event: two months after the Olympiad he plays Gukesh for the world title.

The captaincy is now settled at source. Kasimdzhanov, himself a former FIDE World Champion, is named as captain on the official list — which does not contradict our earlier reporting that Ivan Sokolov returned as head coach in 2025, since these are different roles. Sokolov is in Samarkand too, captaining Romania.

4. China — 2707

• Wei Yi 2752
• Ding Liren 2733
• Yu Yangyi 2710
• Xu Xiangyu 2631
• Kong Xiangrui 2549
• Captain: Yang Wen

China's selection ran on published criteria — a fixed order of priority beginning with the reigning world champion, then World Cup and Candidates qualifiers, then 2700-rated players, then the national champion. Two names trace directly to that ladder: Xu Xiangyu won the 2026 national championship at Xinghua with 8½/11, a title advertised in advance as carrying an Olympiad place, and Kong Xiangrui finished half a point behind him and takes the discretionary fifth spot. Kong makes his Olympiad debut.

Ding Liren's return is the story that will draw the cameras. The former world champion, whose withdrawal from competitive chess after losing the title in 2024 was one of the game's bleaker recent chapters, is back in the team — rated behind Wei Yi, and playing in support rather than as the anchor. China last won the Open in 2018.

5. Germany — 2677

• Vincent Keymer 2764
• Matthias Blübaum 2662
• Frederik Svane 2655
• Alexander Donchenko 2625
• Rasmus Svane 2610
• Captain: GM Jan Gustafsson

A correction to our own earlier entry. We previously listed Dmitrij Kollars on the German sheet and stated that FIDE's release confirmed him. It does not, and he is not in the squad: the fifth place goes to Rasmus Svane, who plays alongside his younger brother Frederik. Some secondary coverage has carried Kollars; the official list is unambiguous, and we should have checked it rather than defending our first version.

Keymer is world number six on the September list and the highest-rated player in the event who is not on one of the top four teams. Frederik Svane won reserve gold in Budapest, where Germany finished seventh.

6. Netherlands — 2675

• Anish Giri 2757
• Jorden van Foreest 2706
• Loek van Wely 2643
• Erwin l'Ami 2595
• Casper Schoppen 2582
• Captain: GM Jan Smeets

The clearest example of how misleading an average can be. Giri and van Foreest are a top-board pair as strong as anything outside the first four seeds; the bottom three are 120 points weaker. Van Wely, at 53, returns for a squad he first played for in the 1990s. Max Warmerdam, whom most previews assumed would be here, is not.

7. Azerbaijan — 2667

• Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 2720
• Aydin Suleymanli 2664
• Mahammad Muradli 2653
• Rauf Mamedov 2631
• Eltaj Safarli 2616
• Captain: GM Teimour Radjabov

Radjabov is in Samarkand, but on the bench: he captains rather than plays, which removes a 2700 from a team that has been a top-ten fixture for two decades. Nijat Abasov, on most pre-season lists, is also absent — he is here as captain of the Azerbaijani women's team. Mamedyarov, at 41, is the last of the generation that took team silver in Batumi.

8. Hungary — 2652

• Richárd Rapport 2726
• Péter Lékó 2676
• Benjámin Gledura 2620
• Tamás Bánusz 2587
• Gleb Dudin 2560
• Captain: GM Csaba Balogh

The three names the Hungarian captain had publicly committed to back in the spring — Rapport, Lékó, Gledura — are all here, and the two open boards went to Bánusz and Dudin. Lékó, 47, has been in and out of competitive play for years; Rapport is the strongest Hungarian since the Polgárs and, on his day, capable of beating anyone in the field.

9. France — 2638

• Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2718
• Étienne Bacrot 2620
• Marc'Andria Maurizzi 2612
• Jules Moussard 2602
• Maxime Lagarde 2593
• Captain: GM Sébastien Mazé

Locked in back in May, and the story is still the name that is missing. Alireza Firouzja, France's number one, is left out for a fifth straight year, with the federation stating publicly that he will not be called up again without a lasting commitment to the national side. France has been a top-ten chess nation for thirty years and has never won an Olympiad medal. We covered the squad, the drought and the standoff in A Century Without a Medal.

10. Armenia — 2637

• Haik M. Martirosyan 2664
• Robert Hovhannisyan 2642
• Shant Sargsyan 2630
• Gabriel Sargissian 2610
• Manuel Petrosyan 2569
• Captain: GM Arman Pashikian

The last team to defend the Open title, in 2008, and the most tightly bunched squad in the top ten: 95 points separate the first board from the fifth. Gabriel Sargissian is playing his eleventh Olympiad and owns three team golds. Levon Aronian, who won all three of them alongside him, is on the American sheet three places above.

11. Ukraine — 2629

• Igor Kovalenko 2642
• Ruslan Ponomariov 2632
• Vasyl Ivanchuk 2630
• Anton Korobov 2610
• Ihor Samunenkov 2608
• Captain: GM Alexander Beliavsky

Twelve points cover all five. Ponomariov, the 2002 FIDE World Champion, returns to the national team; Ivanchuk, 57, plays his seventeenth Olympiad. Samunenkov, 19, is the only member born this century. The disruption the war has caused to Ukrainian chess is not visible in a rating average, and the squad's shape — three players over 35, one teenager, nothing in between — is one place it shows.

12. England — 2624

• Nikita Vitiugov 2666
• Gawain Jones 2633
• Michael Adams 2598
• Luke McShane 2598
• Daniel Fernandez 2542
• Captain: William Watson

Named by the ECF Selection Committee in late June, with Fernandez coming in for David Howell. Adams is 54 and playing his sixteenth Olympiad; McShane remains a part-time professional. England is one of five federations that took FIDE to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over the easing of team restrictions on Russia and Belarus — a case that events have now largely overtaken.

13. Spain — 2620

• David Antón Guijarro 2632
• Maksim Chigaev 2629
• Jaime Santos Latasa 2615
• Alexei Shirov 2603
• Daniil Yuffa 2570
• Captain: GM Jordi Magem Badals

Samarkand is Shirov's fourteenth Olympiad, and the arc in our database is one few active players can match: a debut at Manila 1992 as a 19-year-old scoring 9/13 on board one, 139 Olympiad games since, twelve appearances on the top board, and a 2800 board-one performance at Tromsø 2014 at the age of 42. What he has never had is a team medal. At 54 he is fourth on Spain's sheet, which is its own kind of longevity.

14. Türkiye — 2616

• Yağız Kaan Erdoğmuş 2716
• Ediz Gürel 2636
• Işık Can 2569
• Vahap Şanal 2544
• Emre Can 2534
• Captain: GM Ivan Cheparinov

The most striking top board outside the medal contenders. Erdoğmuş is fifteen, and in May, still fourteen, he became the youngest player in history to cross 2700. Gürel, on board two, is nineteen. Türkiye has never finished in the top ten of an Olympiad; this is the squad that could change that, and it is going to be a fixture of these lists for a decade.

15. Serbia — 2616

• Alexey Sarana 2666
• Velimir Ivić 2601
• Aleksandar Inđić 2598
• Alexandr Predke 2598
• Bojan Maksimović 2534
• Captain: GM Ivan Ivanišević

The quiet climber of recent Olympiads, and a squad assembled partly through transfers — Sarana and Predke both moved federations after 2022. Our Open preview flagged Serbia as the team to watch just outside the medals, and nothing on this sheet argues against it.

16. Poland — 2615

• Jan-Krzysztof Duda 2743
• Szymon Gumularz 2608
• Jan Malek 2587
• Jakub Kosakowski 2520
• Jakub Seemann 2515
• Captain: GM Kamil Mitoń

A substantial correction to our earlier entry, which described the Polish core as Duda, Radosław Wojtaszek and Mateusz Bartel. Neither Wojtaszek nor Bartel is in the squad. Kacper Piorun, who played the last three Olympiads, is not either. Duda is the only survivor of the side that finished fourth in Batumi in 2018 — Poland's best result since the war — and behind him is the largest gap between first and second board of any team in the top twenty: 135 points. Malek, Kosakowski and Seemann have one Olympiad appearance between them.

17. Croatia — 2589

• Ivan Šarić 2623
• Ante Brkić 2610
• Marin Bosiočić 2563
• Leon Livaić 2560
• Saša Martinović 2553
• Captain: GM Zdenko Kožul

Seventy points cover the whole squad, which in a Swiss event is worth more than a single strong board. Šarić was European champion in 2022.

18. Iran — 2587

• M. Amin Tabatabaei 2737
• Bardiya Daneshvar 2572
• Mahdi Gholami Orimi 2553
• Reza Mahdavi 2485
• Arash Daghli 2429
• Captain: Saeid Pirmaleki

Tabatabaei at 2737 is the highest-rated player in the entire Open outside the top thirteen seeds — higher than Duda, higher than Rapport, higher than anyone on the German or Dutch sheets bar Keymer and Giri. Parham Maghsoodloo, whom every pre-season list including ours had leading this team, is absent. The drop from board one to board five here is 308 points, the steepest in the top twenty.

19. Greece — 2585

• Nikolas Theodorou 2633
• Ioannis Papaioannou 2608
• Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis 2567
• Dimitris Alexakis 2533
• Dimitrios Mastrovasilis 2525
• Captain: GM Ioannis Nikolaidis

Five grandmasters within 110 points, led by Theodorou, who built his rating largely in American collegiate and open events.

20. Czech Republic — 2585

• Thai Dai Van Nguyen 2633
• David Navara 2606
• Václav Fínek 2578
• Jan Vykouk 2524
• Jáchym Němec 2483
• Captain: Petr Boleslav

Navara has been the face of Czech chess for twenty years and is now, by two points, not its highest-rated player at this event. Nguyen, born in Prague to Vietnamese parents, has taken over the top of the list.

Just outside

• 21. Norway (2577) — Johan-Sebastian Christiansen 2656, Elham Amar 2577, Frode Urkedal 2571, Aksel Bu Kvaløy 2505, Tor Fredrik Kaasen 2499. Captain: Jon Kristian Haarr. Magnus Carlsen is not here, and neither are Aryan Tari or Jon Ludvig Hammer. Carlsen has played eight Olympiads since 2004, taken board-one bronze at the last two, and never won a team medal; Norway without him falls from perennial dark horse to mid-table. We told the whole story in Magnus Carlsen and the Norway that never medalled.
• 22. Slovenia (2572) — led by Vladimir Fedoseev 2691, who transferred from Russia in 2023 and is the second-highest-rated player outside the top twenty seeds. A one-man top board on a squad otherwise in the 2470s.
• 25. Argentina (2559) — Diego Flores, Fernando Peralta, Sandro Mareco, Federico Pérez Ponsa and Faustino Oro 2537. Oro, who turned thirteen this year and became the second-youngest grandmaster in history in May, travelled to Budapest 2024 with the coaching delegation only. Samarkand is his playing debut.
• 39. Belarus (2503) — led by Denis Lazavik 2621, and playing under the Belarusian flag for the first time since 2018 following the FIDE Council decision of 21 July.

Women's section — the top twenty

190 teams. The number has moved: FIDE announced 192 on 5 August, and the field closed two smaller. Which two is not something we can name — no withdrawal was reported, and the August list is not available to compare against — but the change is real and worth recording, because most previews still quote the round 400 total for both sections. It is 398. Uzbekistan again fields three teams, seeded 13th, 44th and 65th.

One structural point worth noting alongside it: every federation in the Women's event also has a team in the Open. 188 federations plus the two additional Uzbek teams make up the 190. Eighteen federations entered the Open only — mostly the smallest, from Kiribati and Nauru to the Faroe Islands and Macau.

The seeding here has changed since the August release, and one change matters: Kazakhstan is now third and China fourth, reversing the order FIDE published on 5 August. Our previous version of this page had China second, which was wrong even at the time.

1. India — 2466

• Koneru Humpy 2509
• Divya Deshmukh 2490
• Vaishali Rameshbabu 2469
• Vantika Agrawal 2395
• Savitha Shri B 2382
• Captain: GM Swayams Mishra

The defending champions and the clear favourites, with the largest top-seed margin in either section. Humpy returns after sitting out Budapest; Divya and Vantika both won individual gold there, on boards three and four. Harika Dronavalli, part of India's Olympiad teams for over a decade, and Tania Sachdev are both absent.

Vaishali's place looked genuinely uncertain for months: she won the 2026 Candidates and will challenge Ju Wenjun for the Women's World Championship, and FIDE has still not announced dates or a host for that match. With one week to go and nothing scheduled, the collision that would have kept her away is not going to happen. She also has history here — she won the Women's Grand Swiss in Samarkand in September 2025, retaining the title she first took in 2023.

2. Georgia — 2451

• Nana Dzagnidze 2478
• Nino Batsiashvili 2466
• Bella Khotenashvili 2435
• Lela Javakhishvili 2424
• Meri Arabidze 2370
• Captain: Salome Melia

The most decorated women's chess nation in history — nine Women's Olympiad medals, four of them gold — and the deepest squad in the section: 108 points from top to bottom, against India's 127 and China's 214. Dzagnidze has played every Olympiad since 2004.

3. Kazakhstan — 2438

• Bibisara Assaubayeva 2536
• Alua Nurman 2455
• Meruert Kamalidenova 2413
• Elnaz Kaliakhmet 2347
• Zarina Nurgaliyeva 2303
• Captain: GM Pavel Kotsur

Silver in Budapest, a single match point behind India, and no longer overachieving: tenth in Batumi, fifth in Chennai, second in Budapest is a straight line. Assaubayeva won Norway Chess Women in June and finished second at the 2026 Candidates, and is the second-highest-rated woman in the field.

4. China — 2429

• Zhu Jiner 2550
• Song Yuxin 2457
• Lu Miaoyi 2371
• Yan Tianqi 2338
• Zhai Mo 2336
• Captain: Zhong Zhang

The biggest selection story of the season in either section. Ju Wenjun, the reigning women's world champion, is not on the list. Neither are Lei Tingjie nor Tan Zhongyi — three players who between them hold most of China's recent title history. The federation has not explained the omissions, and we are not going to guess at reasons.

What is on the list is a generational handover. Zhu Jiner, individual gold on board one in Budapest, is the highest-rated woman in the event. Lu Miaoyi, born in 2010, is already an International Master and one of the strongest junior girls in the world. Yan Tianqi 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. China has won this event six times; this is a substantially weaker team than it could have fielded, and that reshapes the medal maths below India.

5. United States — 2415

• Carissa Yip 2468
• Alice Lee 2453
• Irina Krush 2393
• Tatev Abrahamyan 2347
• Rose Atwell 2342
• Captain: GM Melikset Khachiyan · Trainer: GM Le Quang Liem

Bronze in Budapest, with Yip, Lee and Krush returning. Yip won individual gold on board two in Budapest. Krush, an eight-time US champion, is playing her fourteenth Olympiad. Atwell makes her debut; Abrahamyan returns for a seventh appearance.

6. Ukraine — 2396

• Anastasiia Hnatyshyn 2463
• Anna Ushenina 2412
• Nataliya Buksa 2390
• Anastasiya Rakhmangulova 2317
• Tetyana Skarbarchuk 2221
• Captain: GM Michail Brodsky

The most eye-catching sheet in the section. Anna and Mariya Muzychuk, who led Ukraine to gold in Chennai, are both absent, and the highest-rated player here is a sixteen-year-old Woman FIDE Master. Hnatyshyn won the 2026 European Women's Championship in Batumi as the 76th seed, scoring 9/11, gaining more than 200 rating points and earning the direct Woman Grandmaster title plus her first IM norm. Ushenina, the 2012 women's world champion, is behind her.

7. Azerbaijan — 2375

• Ulviyya Fataliyeva 2402
• Govhar Beydullayeva 2392
• Khanim Balajayeva 2356
• Gunay Mammadzada 2351
• Gulnar Mammadova 2311
• Captain: GM Nijat Abasov

Ninety-one points across the squad. Mammadzada, long the Azerbaijani number one, is now fourth on rating — the top of this list has genuinely reshuffled rather than being sorted differently.

8. France — 2374

• Marie Sebag 2401
• Deimante Daulyte-Cornette 2391
• Sophie Milliet 2358
• Pauline Guichard 2344
• Manon Schippke 2271
• Captain: IM Silvia Alexieva

Named in May alongside the men, and overlooked in most coverage at the time because the row over Firouzja swallowed it. Sebag has been France's leading woman player for twenty years.

9. Poland — 2369

• Oliwia Kiołbasa 2386
• Klaudia Kulon 2375
• Aleksandra Maltsevskaya 2363
• Monika Soćko 2350
• Alicja Śliwicka 2324
• Captain: GM Marcin Dziuba

Thirty-six points from first board to fifth — the tightest squad in the top twenty of either section, and for a Swiss team event that is a genuine structural advantage. Kiołbasa won individual gold on board one in Chennai. Alina Kashlinskaya, Poland's highest-rated woman, is not in the team. Poland took silver in 2016 and was in medal contention until the final round in Chennai.

10. Germany — 2359

• Elisabeth Pähtz 2404
• Dinara Wagner 2399
• Jana Schneider 2325
• Lara Schulze 2307
• Hanna Marie Klek 2293
• Captain: GM Zahar Efimenko

Pähtz returns after maternity leave, and the earlier version of this page treated her as the only known name on a squad "still to be confirmed." The full five have been on the official list since August.

11. Bulgaria — 2357

• Nurgyul Salimova 2439
• Nadya Toncheva 2408
• Beloslava Krasteva 2343
• Gabriela Antova 2236
• Gergana Peycheva 2225
• Captain: Petar Arnaudov

Salimova, the 2023 World Cup finalist, is the fifth-highest-rated woman in the field and one of the brightest talents in European chess. Bulgaria has never won a Women's Olympiad medal.

12. Netherlands — 2349

• Eline Roebers 2378
• Zhaoqin Peng 2353
• Anna-Maja Kazarian 2333
• Machteld van Foreest 2333
• Robin Duson 2173
• Captain: IM Jeroen Bosch

Roebers, 20, is now the Dutch number one. Peng, at 57, is playing her fourteenth Olympiad for a country she moved to from China in 1988. Machteld van Foreest is the sister of Jorden, on the Dutch open sheet.

13. Uzbekistan — 2345

• Afruza Khamdamova 2443
• Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova 2357
• Umida Omonova 2297
• Nilufarkhon Imomkuzieva 2281
• Guldona Karimova 2242
• Captain: WGM Nafisa Muminova

The hosts finished 19th in Batumi, 24th in Chennai and 12th in Budapest — a genuine climb, and Nodirbekova aside, largely by the same group. A top-ten finish would be an Uzbek first, and on this seeding it needs three places of overperformance rather than ten.

14. Serbia — 2341

• Teodora Injac 2406
• Alina Bivol 2345
• Elif Mehmed 2316
• Jovana Srdanović 2298
• Sofia Pogorelskikh 2244
• Captain: GM Alisa Marić

Marić, a former Women's World Championship Candidate herself, captains a squad built partly on transfers — Bivol and Pogorelskikh both changed federations after 2022.

15. Mongolia — 2324

• Bat-Erdene Mungunzul 2402
• Batkhuyag Munguntuul 2317
• Turmunkh Munkhzul 2290
• Khishigbaatar Bayasgalan 2285
• Bayarjargal Bayarmaa 2113
• Captain: Batsaikhan Tserendorj

Mongolia has quietly become a fixture in the upper half of this event, and Mungunzul at 2402 is a stronger top board than several teams seeded above her country.

16. Armenia — 2322

• Elina Danielian 2382
• Mariam Mkrtchyan 2374
• Lilit Mkrtchian 2353
• Susanna Gaboyan 2179
• Anahit Mkrtchyan 2106
• Captain: GM Zaven Andriasian

Three players inside thirty points and then a 174-point drop — the most front-loaded squad in the women's top twenty. Danielian, 48, and Lilit Mkrtchian, 43, have been carrying Armenian women's chess since the 1990s.

17. Switzerland — 2319

• Alexandra Kosteniuk 2495
• Mariia Manko 2285
• Sofiia Hryzlova 2254
• Ghazal Hakimifard 2243
• Camille De Seroux 2152
• Captain: Gundula Heinatz

The largest single-board advantage anywhere in the event. Kosteniuk — women's world champion 2008–2010, and a Russian Olympiad gold medallist before she transferred to Switzerland in 2022 — is the third-highest-rated woman in Samarkand, 210 points above her own second board and higher than the top player of every team seeded above her except India, Kazakhstan and China. Switzerland has never come close to a Women's Olympiad medal; on board one it will be favourite in nearly every match it plays.

18. Hungary — 2311

• Zsóka Gaál 2357
• Davaademberel Nomin-Erdene 2315
• Szidónia Lázárné Vajda 2289
• Petra Papp 2283
• Kata Karácsonyi 2137
• Captain: Miklós Galyás

Gaál, 19, is one of the strongest juniors in the world and the natural successor to a tradition that has not had an obvious heir since the Polgár sisters.

19. Spain — 2309

• Sabrina Vega Gutiérrez 2363
• Marta García Martín 2349
• Ann Matnadze Bujiashvili 2302
• Inés Prado Acebo 2222
• Mónica Calzetta Ruiz 2181
• Captain: José Fernando Cuenca Jiménez

Vega, the European vice-champion, leads a squad we previously listed as her plus four unknowns. The full line-up has been public since August.

20. England — 2301

• Bodhana Sivanandan 2354
• Jovanka Houska 2297
• Harriet Hunt 2284
• Lan Yao 2270
• Elmira Mirzoeva 2181
• Captain: GM Stuart Conquest

Sivanandan is eleven, and she tops the English list on rating. She was already the youngest person ever to represent England internationally in any sport when she played at Budapest 2024 aged nine, and she has since become the youngest girl in history to earn an International Master norm, breaking a record Judit Polgár had held for nearly four decades. Whether she plays board one is Conquest's decision — and, per the note at the top of this page, that decision has not been made yet.

The shadow over the start list

The eligibility question that hung over this Olympiad for nine months is now closed for competition purposes, though not at governance level. It resolved in three separate moves, and they are routinely collapsed into one story when they are not one story.

Belarus: cleared, and playing. On 21 July the FIDE Council lifted every restriction previously imposed on the Belarus Chess Federation, effective immediately, following an IOC Executive Board recommendation adopted in May that no longer advises restricting Belarusian athletes or teams. Belarus is seeded 39th in the Open and 32nd in the Women's event, under its own flag. This came through an administrative route, not a judicial one; no court ordered it.

Dvorkovich: stepped aside. On 23 July, Arkady Dvorkovich suspended his own powers as FIDE President after the European Union placed him on its sanctions list. Viswanathan Anand, the deputy president, has exercised presidential authority since 24 July. Dvorkovich remains formally the president.

Russia: rejected. On 23 August the FIDE Council considered the Russian Chess Federation's application to enter teams in Samarkand and voted it down. The proposal to reject came from Anand, according to the Russian federation's own executive director, Alexander Tkachev, speaking to TASS; the Ukrainian federation reported the outcome first, and FIDE subsequently published the Council decision. Russia will miss its third consecutive over-the-board Olympiad, after Chennai 2022 and Budapest 2024. Reaction in Russia was sharp — Anatoly Karpov and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov both criticised the decision publicly.

Two threads remain untied, and both land during the event itself. Under FIDE's statutes, the General Assembly must still confirm the three-year suspension imposed on the Russian federation in June following the CAS ruling in the case brought by Ukraine — and the General Assembly meets in Samarkand. So does the FIDE presidential election, on 26–27 September, in the closing days of the Olympiad. Separately, the joint CAS appeal brought by Ukraine, England, Norway, Estonia and Germany against the December 2025 easing of team restrictions was heard in mid-June and we have found no published decision.

None of that changes who plays in Samarkand. All of it may change what happens afterwards.

What is still genuinely open

Three things, and only three:

• The board orders. Not published, not decided, and the single most misreported detail of this Olympiad. Captains submit fixed orders under the Olympiad Regulations once invited to; until then every list, including this one, is a rating sort. Expect the India and Uzbekistan sheets in particular to look different when the real orders appear.
• The Women's World Championship. Vaishali beat Ju Wenjun's other challengers in April; five months later FIDE has still not named dates or a host city for the match. It no longer threatens her Olympiad, but it remains an open item on the calendar and an odd one.
• The Russian question at governance level. A start list without a Russian entry is not the same as a confirmed General Assembly vote or a CAS decision. Both are still pending, and both fall in or around the Olympiad fortnight.

We will update this page through the event as board orders are filed and, where relevant, as squads change. The Samarkand 2026 hub carries the full player cards.

Sources

Primary, read at source. The official Samarkand 2026 start lists for both sections, generated from the tournament pairing file by the organisers and last updated 5 September 2026 (Open) and 2 September 2026 (Women) — the source for every line-up, rating, team average, seeding and captain on this page, and for the note on provisional rating-order listing that the correction above rests on. FIDE, "Team line-ups confirmed for 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad," 5 August 2026, for the original announcement and for quotes from Praggnanandhaa and Koneru Humpy. FIDE Council announcement of 21 July 2026 and the underlying IOC Executive Board recommendation of 6–7 May 2026, on Belarus. US Chess Federation, June 2026. English Chess Federation, June 2026. All India Chess Federation, 23 July 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, for China's selection ladder. 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. The FIDE Council decision of 23 August 2026 on Russian teams, from TASS (quoting the Russian federation's executive director), the Ukrainian Chess Federation, ChessBase and World Chess; FIDE published the Council decision subsequently. Dvorkovich's suspension of his powers and Anand's assumption of presidential authority, from Reuters, 23 July 2026. Norway's omissions beyond Carlsen, from Zamin.uz, August 2026. Nakamura's stated reasons for absence, from his own stream, reported by Chess.com.

Corrected in this update. Our 9 August entry stated that FIDE's release confirmed Dmitrij Kollars in the German squad and treated a report naming Rasmus Svane as an error; the official list names Rasmus Svane. Our Polish entry gave the squad core as Duda, Wojtaszek and Bartel; neither Wojtaszek nor Bartel is selected. Our Women's section had China second-seeded; the current seeding has Kazakhstan third and China fourth. Board-order readings throughout the 9 August update have been withdrawn.

Olympiad records for Alexei Shirov (fourteen Olympiads 1992–2024, 139 games, twelve appearances on board one, 2800 performance at Tromsø 2014), Gabriel Sargissian, Irina Krush, Zhaoqin Peng, Vasyl Ivanchuk and Norway's finishes across Carlsen's eight Olympiads are drawn from the olympchess.com historical Olympiad database (1924–2024).

Compiled 19 July 2026. Rebuilt in full on 8 September 2026 from the official start lists. Earlier updates are collapsed above.