Women's Chess Olympiad 2026 in Samarkand: full schedule, teams and live coverage
The women’s section of the 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad will be held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from September 15 to 27, with the opening ceremony on September 15 and the first competitive round scheduled for September 16; the tournament comprises 11 rounds under the Swiss-system format.
The event will be staged at the Silk Road EXPO complex and features teams of five players, four of whom play each round with one reserve. India enter the tournament as defending champions after winning the women’s gold medal at the 2024 Chess Olympiad in Budapest; their squad is Koneru Humpy, Divya Deshmukh, R Vaishali, Vantika Agrawal and Savitha Shri B, and India are the top-seeded team with an average rating of 2466.
Georgia are second-seeded on 2451 and will field Nana Dzagnidze, Nino Batsiashvili and Bella Khotenashvili; Kazakhstan sit third with an average rating of 2438 and will be led by Bibisara Assaubayeva. China’s lineup includes Zhu Jiner, Song Yuxin and Lu Miaoyi, while the United States, ranked fifth, will feature Carissa Yip, Alice Lee and Irina Krush. Ukraine, Azerbaijan, France, Poland and Germany complete the top 10 teams by average rating.
Rounds one to six are scheduled to run consecutively from September 16 to 21, followed by the tournament’s sole rest day on September 22; rounds seven to ten are set for September 23 to 26. The final, 11th round will be played on September 27.
Rounds 1–10 are due to start at 3:00 PM local time in Samarkand (3:30 PM IST), while the final round is scheduled to begin at 11:00 AM local time (11:30 AM IST).
The Women’s Chess Olympiad uses the Swiss-system pairing method: pairings for Round 1 will be determined before the event begins, with subsequent pairings released after each round. Fixtures, board-by-board games, match results, pairings and updated standings will be available through the tournament’s official platforms.
The Open and Women’s competitions will take place simultaneously at the Silk Road EXPO complex, and viewers can follow live coverage via FIDE’s official digital platforms and Chess.com, subject to regional availability. The tournament concludes with Round 11 and the closing ceremony on September 27.