The chess calendar of 2026 is stacked with championships – five separate players may be crowned ‘world champion’. But American Wesley So, who won the blitz segment of the recently concluded Tata Steel Chess, believes only D Gukesh, who will defend his world title at the end of this year, has an official claim to the title.
Recently, following months of public dispute, the organisers of Freestyle Chess and FIDE have joined forces to announce the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship, to be held in Germany in February 2026. This is in addition to the classical title, the World Rapid Championship and the World Blitz Championship (which are held together at the end of each year) and the newly-announced Total Chess World Championship, which will go live from 2027 after a pilot event this year.
In criticising the sport’s ‘very political’ governing body, FIDE, So believes they have devalued their own most prestigious title – the classical World Chess Championship held every two years and won by Gukesh in 2024 – by introducing these events.
“It’s weird that you have a “Total Chess World Champion” title, but then we all know Gukesh is the official World Champion. There should only be one World Champion in chess, and that’s Gukesh for now, because he really made it. All these new titles like Freestyle World Champion, or even Rapid and Blitz, or the Total… I think they are just secondary titles,” So told The Indian Express.
“FIDE is very political. They run it as a business, so they do what’s good for them financially and politically, and everything else is secondary,” he added.
For 32-year-old Wesley So, this was his first title at the Tata Steel event in his sixth appearance at the Kolkata event. (Express Photo by Partha Paul)
So also argued that there is a collective voice against the Classical World Championship as well. “But I know many people in the US, for instance, who think that the World Champion title that Gukesh has right now is outdated. They think that the chess world can live without having the Classical World Championship title,” he said.
He acknowledges that this thought is not only led by the fact that Gukesh is not clearly the strongest player to win the World Championship, but also because people want chess to be ‘radical’. “(They want) faster time controls, online games. It should be that every year you start a new tournament from scratch, kind of like the NBA.”
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Obviously, So is not aligned with that belief system. He calls himself an old-fashioned chess lover who grew up seeing the likes of Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, and Garry Kasparov.
“I’m more old-fashioned. Growing up with all the official World Champions like Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, reading about them, I still like the idea that you have to play a 14-game classical match and go through the process. And that the champion should be able to get that advantage, to wait for the challenger to come,” he said.
Bias in selection
While FIDE clarified that the new FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship will be a continuation of FIDE’s previous events in the Fischer Random format, held in 2019 and 2022, both editions’ World Champions, Hikaru Nakamura and So, weren’t invited for this upcoming event.
Instead, the February event will feature eight players. Six of whom were qualified based on their results during the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, while one was recommended by the organisers. To determine the eighth player, FIDE will hold an Online Qualification Tournament on Chess.com later this month.
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Asked whether it’s a surprise not to see his name on the invited list, So said, “I’m not particularly surprised, because I never get invited to Magnus Carlsen’s events. I believe when that (FIDE Grand Slam Tour) started, he was the one who handpicked which players to invite.”
“This is why you’ll also never see Anish Giri there either. It’s fine, but to call it a World Championship, and then handpick seven out of eight players, does not seem like a World Championship. When the event started… the players were mostly handpicked. And now they are selecting the top seven of last year’s tour, but all the players were handpicked anyway to begin with,” he said.
He believes that in order for it to be a World Championship, every spot should go through a qualifier.
So also refuted the Freestyle Chess organisers’ claim that it’s the easiest format to follow and that they are tapping into the non-chess audience because of its simplicity.
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“For fans to follow Freestyle is difficult. I myself don’t really follow the games. I mean, I love following chess, but Freestyle is hard for me because I will never see the starting position or remember that I saw it before. They have a lot of books about Chess960 and Freestyle, but I wonder who actually reads those,” he argued.
So also felt that the Weissenhaus event could be the last event of Freestyle chess. “We will see what happens. It could very well be their last event.”
