From Chennai 2022 to Samarkand 2026: Uzbekistan's Four-Year Arc

Two trophies in the same week

The first week of August 2022 gave Uzbekistan two things that no chess federation had received together before. On the boards of the 44th Chess Olympiad in Chennai, the Uzbek Open team won gold — undefeated across eleven rounds, with an average age of twenty, with no player older than 27. At the same venue, on 8 August, the FIDE General Assembly voted to award the 46th Chess Olympiad to Uzbekistan. The host city would be confirmed later: Samarkand.

It is rare for a federation to win the Olympiad and to win the right to host the next one in the same week. For Uzbekistan it happened simultaneously. Four years later, the team that won in Chennai will play at home in Samarkand, on the same boards, in front of a country that has spent the four years between learning what to expect.

This is what happened in those four years. The medal at home is not the only line in the story. The team won other things, lost others, changed coaches twice, and produced a player who will play for the world title two months after the Olympiad ends.

Table of contents

• August 2022: gold and a host bid
• The Samarkand test, December 2023
• Budapest 2024: bronze under Kramnik
• 2025: World Cup and the road to the Candidates
• 2026: two players in the world top five
• What changes at home
• Frequently asked questions
• Sources and further reading

August 2022: gold and a host bid

The Uzbek team that arrived in Chennai was not seeded to win. The United States led the rating list at 2771 average. India A was second; India B, fielded almost entirely with teenagers including the future world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, was third. Russia and China were absent. Uzbekistan was eleventh.

The team had been put together over two months. In May 2022, the Uzbekistan Chess Federation approached Dutch-Bosnian grandmaster Ivan Sokolov during the Sharjah Masters and asked him to coach the national side. He had originally been booked to commentate on the Olympiad. He cancelled the contract, flew to Tashkent at the end of June, and met four of his players: Yakubboev, Sindarov, Jakhongir Vakhidov, and Shamsiddin Vokhidov. The fifth, Abdusattorov, was playing in Biel and joined later.

Sokolov's preparation method was direct. He looked at the players' games from the last twelve months, identified the middlegame structures they reached most often, and built training databases organised by structure rather than by opening name. "I told them don't expect me to work on positions to find some blockbuster novelties," Sokolov said after the Olympiad. "I can improve situations at other levels."

The Olympiad began on 28 July 2022. Uzbekistan won the first nine rounds. In round 10, against India 2, Abdusattorov beat Gukesh on board one — the deciding result of a 2.5–1.5 match. In round 11, against the Netherlands, three games drew and Jakhongir Vakhidov won on board five against Max Warmerdam, securing gold. "I played for a win not only for my people but for my board," Vakhidov told the press conference. "It was too much pressure."

The final standings: Uzbekistan and Armenia tied on 19 match points; Uzbekistan won gold on tiebreaks. Abdusattorov finished with 8.5/11 and a 2803 performance rating, taking individual silver on board one behind Gukesh. Yakubboev took individual bronze on board two with 8/11.

Three days earlier — on 8 August — the FIDE General Assembly had already done its other piece of business. The 46th Olympiad, scheduled for September 2026, was awarded to Uzbekistan. The bid had been approved with the understanding that the host city would be either Tashkent or Samarkand. The team was, in two senses, the host nation: defending champion, and future home venue.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev congratulated the team by phone during the closing match. He later awarded each player the honorary title "Uzbekiston iftikhori" — Pride of Uzbekistan. According to Sokolov's account in chess.com, players received bonuses of around $55,000 plus a car, with some receiving considerably more.

The Samarkand test, December 2023

The 2026 Olympiad was four years away. For FIDE and for Uzbekistan, four years was a long time to wait without testing the infrastructure. In November 2023, FIDE announced that the year's World Rapid and Blitz Championships — the federation's largest annual event after the Olympiad — would be held in Samarkand. The decision came eight weeks before the event began. Visa logistics, hotel allocation, and player schedules had to be sorted at speed.

The championships ran from 25 to 30 December 2023 at the Samarkand Congress Center, the same venue that would host the Olympiad. About 350 of the world's strongest players took part, with $1 million in prize money. Magnus Carlsen won double gold — his fifth Rapid title and seventh Blitz title. The Women's Rapid went to Russian IM Anastasia Bodnaruk; the Women's Blitz to Valentina Gunina.

For the host city, the championships demonstrated three things. The Congress Center could handle a tournament of around 350 players plus officials, journalists, and spectators. The local audience showed up — Abdusattorov's quiet draw with Carlsen in round 12 of the Rapid played to a packed hall. And the operational team learned what it needed to handle on a five-day schedule before scaling to the Olympiad's eleven-day schedule.

For Uzbekistan's players, the December 2023 event was something else: a chance to play under home conditions before they would be expected to play under them at the Olympiad. Abdusattorov and Sindarov did not win medals. Sindarov was eighteen at the time. Both played at the venue they would defend gold at three years later.

Budapest 2024: bronze under Kramnik

The 45th Chess Olympiad opened in Budapest on 11 September 2024, with a record 197 teams in the Open and 183 in the Women's section. Uzbekistan was the defending champion, seeded fourth. The five players who had won Chennai two years earlier — Abdusattorov, Yakubboev, Sindarov, Sh. Vokhidov, J. Vakhidov — returned as the entire roster.

The captain was different. Ivan Sokolov had moved on. In the time between Chennai and Budapest he had accepted a coaching role with Romania. The Uzbek federation had hired former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik in his place. Kramnik had won the Olympiad three times with the Russian team in the 1990s and 2000s; he had a long history of high-level team coaching; he brought a different style of preparation from Sokolov's. The same five Uzbek players were now coached by a former classical world champion instead of a Dutch-Bosnian grandmaster.

The tournament did not start cleanly. Uzbekistan opened with comfortable wins over Trinidad and Tobago, Egypt, and Croatia. In round four they lost to Vietnam 1–3 — a result that immediately dropped them out of the early gold-medal pace. They recovered, beating Moldova, Israel, Ukraine, and Serbia in the following rounds.

By round nine the standings had narrowed to a small group. India led with sixteen match points, two ahead of Uzbekistan, Hungary, and the United States. Uzbekistan faced India in round nine. All four games drew. The match — India 2 : Uzbekistan 2 — was the first time in the Budapest Olympiad that India had been held to anything less than a win.

The round became briefly famous for a different reason. During play, Kramnik filed a formal complaint about the presence of phones at the playing tables, used by Indian media outlets to film the matches. The Indian outlets responded that the phones were on airplane mode and within tournament rules. Kramnik, who would later be subject to a separate FIDE ethics complaint over different matters, made clear in the press that cameras would not have been a problem; the phones, even on airplane mode, were. The phone on Gukesh's board was removed for inspection and then returned. Play continued.

In round ten, Uzbekistan lost to China. By the final round, the team needed to beat France and hope for other results. They did beat France 2.5–1.5. The US lost to China at the top of the standings. India finished alone in gold position with 21 match points. Five teams tied on 17: United States, Uzbekistan, China, Serbia, and Armenia.

Tiebreaks decided the medals. The United States, with the strongest opponents through the tournament, took silver. Uzbekistan took bronze. China was fourth. Two-and-a-bit years after winning gold from the eleventh seed, Uzbekistan had taken bronze from the fourth seed — a different kind of result, but a medal nonetheless. It was Abdusattorov's second consecutive Olympiad medal. Vokhidov collected board four individual gold with 8/10 and zero losses; Abdusattorov took board one silver with 9/11 (his only loss was to Gukesh in the final round). The two individual medals were part of a result that Uzbekistan's media described as solid.

Within a year the federation made another change. Sokolov, his Romania chapter complete, returned to Uzbekistan in 2025. By November of that year he was named chess.com's Coach of the Month, with the article citing both the Chennai Olympiad gold and his European Team Championship results in 2025, where teams he was coaching finished first and fifth. Kramnik's tenure with Uzbekistan, like Sokolov's first one, had lasted one Olympiad.

2025: World Cup and the road to the Candidates

Bronze at Budapest was the team's most public result of 2024. The most consequential individual result came a year later.

The FIDE World Cup 2025 was a 206-player knockout. Sindarov, seeded sixteenth, won. He defeated Yu Yangyi, Frederik Svane, José Martínez Alcántara, his compatriot Yakubboev in the semifinal (after tiebreaks), and Wei Yi in the final. He was 19 years, 11 months, and 18 days old at the moment of victory — the youngest World Cup winner ever, and the first Uzbek. President Mirziyoyev awarded him the Order of "Mehnat Shuhrati" — Labour Glory.

The victory mattered because it sent Sindarov to the 2026 Candidates Tournament. Eight players competed in Cyprus in April 2026 for the right to challenge the reigning World Chess Champion Gukesh D. Sindarov won, ahead of (among others) Fabiano Caruana. The match against Gukesh was confirmed for late 2026.

Two months separate the Olympiad in Samarkand from the World Championship match. Sindarov will play board one or board two for Uzbekistan in Samarkand; whichever it is, Gukesh's preparation team will study every game he plays.

The other story of 2025 was Sindarov's individual coach. From January 2025, Sindarov began working full-time with International Master Roman Vidonyak. The arrangement was outside the federation's coaching pipeline. Sindarov's progression — World Cup winner, Candidates winner, World Championship challenger — happened during the same twelve-month period that Vidonyak was working with him.

For Uzbekistan, the federation had two coaching tracks running by the end of 2025: Sokolov returning at the national-team level, and Vidonyak with Sindarov individually. The combination would carry the team into 2026.

2026: two players in the world top five

The FIDE rating list of May 2026 contained two Uzbek names in the world's top five. Nodirbek Abdusattorov sat at number four with 2780. Javokhir Sindarov, fresh from winning the Candidates, sat at number five with 2776. Between them was Magnus Carlsen at the top, who had been there for over fifteen years.

The path to those numbers was a series of tournament wins. In January 2026, Abdusattorov won the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee — the most prestigious annual classical event on the calendar — with a +4 score across thirteen rounds, gaining twenty rating points and moving from twelfth to fifth in the world. Two months later he won the Prague International Chess Festival 2026, becoming the only player to have won Prague Masters twice. By April his rating was 2780 and he was world number four.

Sindarov's 2026 was about the Candidates. After winning the World Cup in 2025, he entered Cyprus as one of the favourites. He defeated Caruana in round four. He took clear first place before the final round and won the tournament on tiebreaks. By the time the May rating list was published, his rating had crossed 2776 and he had joined Abdusattorov in the world top five.

The Grand Swiss 2025, held in Samarkand the previous September, had been another marker on the path. Yakubboev had taken part. Anish Giri won the Open section; Vaishali Rameshbabu won the Women's. Both winners qualified for the Candidates 2026. The Samarkand venue, which had hosted the World Rapid and Blitz in 2023, was now the venue for one of the most important Swiss tournaments on the elite calendar. For Uzbek players, it was the second time in two years that the federation's top players had competed at the Olympiad venue under tournament conditions.

By summer 2026, the federation's coaching, infrastructure, and player development had aligned for the Olympiad. The team would arrive at the Silk Road International Exhibition Center as defending bronze medalists, two-time top-five players, and host-nation representatives. Sokolov was back as head coach. Sindarov was the World Championship challenger. Abdusattorov was world number four. Yakubboev had three Uzbek championships and a Qatar Masters title. The Vakhidovs — Jakhongir and Shamsiddin — had between them the decisive game of Chennai and the individual gold of Budapest.

The infrastructure that had been tested in 2023 and used again in 2025 was scheduled to be tested again, this time over eleven rounds and with around two hundred federations.

What changes at home

A note from the editor: what follows is editorial observation drawing on the facts above, rather than a claim from a single source. The four-year arc from Chennai to Samarkand has not run as a single line. The team has not added a player who was not already on the roster in 2022. The four-year change has been outside the team: the coach, the venue, the rating, the level of expectation.

In 2022, Uzbekistan was the underdog. The eleventh seed, with the youngest squad in the field, on neutral ground in India. Gold was a story partly because nobody had expected it.

In 2026, the same five players will play under different conditions. They are the defending bronze medalists. They have two players in the world top five. They are playing at home, in a venue where they have already played the World Rapid (2023) and the Grand Swiss (2025). Their senior player on board four took individual gold at the previous Olympiad. Their captain at the previous Olympiad was a former world champion; their captain now is the man who first brought them together in 2022.

The expectation has shifted from "can they pull off another surprise" to "what does success look like for them this time." A second gold would be the obvious answer, but it is also a high bar — only a handful of federations in Olympiad history have won back-to-back golds, and India's current team, the US's current team, and China's current team all have credible cases for gold themselves. A repeat medal of any colour, on home soil, would be the consistent record of a top-five chess nation. Falling outside the medals would, by the standards of the four years described above, count as a setback.

The arc that started with two trophies in Chennai will close with one tournament in Samarkand. Eleven rounds, two hundred federations, four boards, fourteen days. Whatever it produces will be the next entry in a record that, as of now, contains gold, bronze, two World Championship-level individual careers, two world-top-five rating slots, and one home Olympiad opening on 15 September 2026.

Frequently asked questions

What was Uzbekistan's result at Chennai 2022?

Uzbekistan won the gold medal at the 44th Chess Olympiad in Chennai. The team scored 19 match points (8 wins, 3 draws, 0 losses) undefeated across 11 rounds, tied with Armenia on match points, and won the title on tiebreaks. Average team age: 20. Abdusattorov took individual silver on board 1 with a performance rating of 2803; Yakubboev took individual bronze on board 2.

Was the same team in Budapest 2024?

Yes. All five players from the Chennai 2022 line-up — Abdusattorov, Yakubboev, Sindarov, Shamsiddin Vokhidov, and Jakhongir Vakhidov — played at Budapest 2024. The captain was different: former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik replaced Ivan Sokolov, who had moved to coach Romania.

Did Uzbekistan defend gold at Budapest 2024?

No. India won gold at Budapest 2024. Uzbekistan finished with 17 match points, tied with the United States, China, Serbia, and Armenia. After tiebreaks, the United States took silver and Uzbekistan took bronze. Abdusattorov won individual silver on board 1 (9/11); Vokhidov won individual gold on board 4 (8/10, no losses).

Who is coaching Uzbekistan at Samarkand 2026?

Ivan Sokolov, who returned to the Uzbek federation in 2025 after coaching Romania during the Budapest 2024 cycle. Sokolov was the coach who led Uzbekistan to gold at Chennai 2022. He was named chess.com's Coach of the Month in November 2025.

When did FIDE choose Samarkand as the 2026 host?

The FIDE General Assembly voted on 8 August 2022, during the Chennai Olympiad, to award the 2026 Olympiad to Uzbekistan. The host city — confirmed later — became Samarkand rather than Tashkent. Uzbekistan was simultaneously winning gold at that Olympiad.

What other major chess events has Samarkand hosted before the Olympiad?

Two. The FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championships in December 2023 (won by Magnus Carlsen in both formats) and the FIDE Grand Swiss in September 2025 (won by Anish Giri in the Open, Vaishali Rameshbabu in the Women's). Both took place at the Silk Road International Exhibition Center, the same venue that will host the 2026 Olympiad.

What is Sindarov's match against Gukesh in 2026?

Javokhir Sindarov won the 2025 FIDE World Cup, qualifying for the 2026 Candidates Tournament. He won the Candidates in Cyprus in April 2026, earning the right to challenge the reigning World Chess Champion Gukesh D of India. The match is provisionally scheduled for November–December 2026 — two months after the Olympiad concludes. Both players will be 20 years old at the start of the match.

How did Uzbekistan's top players' ratings change between 2022 and 2026?

Significantly. In August 2022, Abdusattorov's rating was 2710. By April 2026 it was 2780 (world number 4). Sindarov's rating in August 2022 was 2643; in May 2026 it was 2776 (world number 5). Both players had crossed 2700 for the first time during the period covered by this article.

What does "back-to-back medal" mean for Uzbekistan?

Gold at Chennai 2022 and bronze at Budapest 2024 give Uzbekistan two consecutive Open Olympiad medals. The 2022 podium was Uzbekistan (gold), Armenia (silver), and India 2 (bronze) — and of those three, only India (with the same generation of players now competing as India A) also took a medal at Budapest 2024, where they won gold. Uzbekistan and India are the only two federations to have medalled at both Chennai 2022 and Budapest 2024 in the Open section. A third consecutive medal at Samarkand 2026 would be an achievement matched in modern Olympiad history by very few federations.

Sources and further reading

This article draws on:

• FIDE official communications around the Chennai 2022 General Assembly decisions
• chess.com: "Uzbekistan Wins Gold In Open; Ukraine In Women's", round 11 report from Chennai 2022
• chess.com: "Interview: Captain Ivan Sokolov On Coaching Gold-Winning Uzbek Chess Squad", August 2022
• chess.com: "Chess.com Coach of the Month GM Ivan Sokolov", November 2025
• chess.com: April 2026 FIDE Ratings article
• ChessBase: "Chess Olympiad: USA, India and China the rating favourites" (July 2024) — confirming Kramnik captain and Sokolov-to-Romania
• ChessBase: "Budapest R9 (open): Uzbekistan draw India, Gukesh and co. set to face the US"
• Wikipedia: 45th Chess Olympiad; Open event at the 45th Chess Olympiad
• kun.uz: "Uzbekistan's men's team secures bronze at the World Chess Olympiad" (September 2024)
• Outlook India: coverage of the Round 9 phones complaint (September 2024)
• TWIC: 45th World Chess Olympiad 2024 archive
• kingdomofchess.com: FIDE ratings April–May 2026
• Wikipedia: Javokhir Sindarov, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Ivan Sokolov

For readers interested in the deeper history of the Chess Olympiad — every edition from London 1927 to Budapest 2024 — the Great Book of Chess Olympiads series by Krzysztof Puszczewicz remains the most comprehensive English-language chronicle of the event. The Chennai 2022 volume documents the breakthrough described at the start of this article; the Budapest 2024 volume documents the bronze; the Samarkand 2026 volume will, in due course, complete the four-year arc.

Chess on the Silk Road returns to Samarkand from 15 to 28 September 2026. We will be covering it from the first round onward.