The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. The current world champion is Gukesh Dommaraju, who defeated the previous champion Ding Liren in the 2024 World Chess Championship.
The first event recognised as a world championship was the 1886 match between Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort. Steinitz won, making him the first world champion. From 1886 to 1946, the champion set the terms, requiring any challenger to raise a sizable stake and defeat the champion in a match in order to become the new champion. Following the death of reigning world champion Alexander Alekhine in 1946, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) took over administration of the World Championship, beginning with the 1948 tournament. From 1948 to 1993, FIDE organised a set of tournaments and matches to choose a new challenger for the world championship match, which was held every three years.
Before the 1993 match, then reigning champion Garry Kasparov and his championship rival Nigel Short broke away from FIDE, and conducted the match under the umbrella of the newly formed Professional Chess Association. FIDE conducted its own tournament, which was won by Anatoly Karpov, and led to a rival claimant to the title of World Champion for the next thirteen years until 2006. The titles were unified at the World Chess Championship 2006, and all the subsequent tournaments and matches have once again been administered by FIDE. Since the World Chess Championship 2014, the championship has settled on a two-year cycle, with championship matches conducted every even year.
Emanuel Lasker was the longest serving World Champion, having held the title for 27 years, and holds the record for the most Championship wins with six along with Kasparov and Karpov.
Though the world championship is open to all players, there are separate championships for women, under-20s and lower age groups, and seniors. There are also chess world championships in rapid, blitz, correspondence, problem solving, Fischer random chess and computer chess.
History
Early champions (pre-1886) Before 1851
The game of chess in its modern form emerged in Spain in the 15th century, though rule variations persisted until the late 19th century. Before Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort in the late 19th century, no chess player seriously claimed to be champion of the world. The phrase was used by some chess writers to describe other players of their day, and the status of being the best at the time has sometimes been awarded in retrospect, going back to the early 17th-century Italian player Gioachino Greco (the first player where complete games survive). Richard Lambe, in his 1764 book The History of Chess, wrote that the 18th-century French player François-André Danican Philidor was "supposed to be the best Chess-player in the world". Philidor wrote an extremely successful chess book (Analyse du jeu des Échecs) and gave public demonstrations of his blindfold chess skills."A History of Chess", H. J. R. Murray, pp. 863–865 However, some of Philidor's contemporaries were not convinced by the analysis Philidor gave in his book (e.g. the Modenese Masters), and some more recent authors have echoed these doubts."A History of Chess", H. J. R. Murray, p. 870
In the early 19th century, it was generally considered that the French player Alexandre Deschapelles was the strongest player of the time, though three games between him and the English player William Lewis in 1821 suggests that they were on par."A History of Chess", H. J. R. Murray, p. 878: "It was, however, generally accepted that Deschapelles was the strongest player of his time, and Sarratt appears to have acquiesced in this opinion, although there was apparently no stronger reason for it than the fact that the general standard of French chess had been higher than that of English chess in the end of the eighteenth century. The result of Lewis's visit was to show that there was very little, if any, difference in strength between Deschapelles and himself." After Deschapelles and Lewis withdrew from play, the strongest players competing in France and Britain respectively were recognised as Louis de la Bourdonnais and Alexander McDonnell. La Bourdonnais visited England in 1825, where he played many games against Lewis and won most of them, and defeated all the other English masters despite offering handicaps.David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess, Oxford University Press, 1992 (2nd edition), p.56. . He and McDonnell contested a long series of matches in 1834. These were the first to be adequately reported,"A History of Chess", H. J. R. Murray, pp. 882–5 and they somewhat resemble the later world championship matches. Approximately 85 games (the true number is up for historical debate) were played, with La Bourdonnais winning a majority of the games.
In 1839, George Walker wrote "The sceptre of chess, in Europe, has been for the last century, at least, wielded by a Gallic dynasty. It has passed from Legalle [Philidor's teacher, whom Philidor regarded as being a player equal to himself, according to Deschapelles]F. M. Edge, The exploits and triumphs, in Europe, of Paul Morphy, 1859 page 115 to La Bourdonnais, through the grasp, successively, of Philidor, Bernard, Carlier [two members of La Société des Amateurs], and Deschapelles". In 1840, a columnist in Fraser's Magazine (who was probably Walker) wrote, "Will Gaul continue the dynasty by placing a fourth Frenchman on the throne of the world? the three last chess chiefs having been successively Philidor, Deschapelles, and De La Bourdonnais." Jeremy Spinrad believes the author was George Walker.
After La Bourdonnais' death in December 1840,Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution . Paul Metzner, Berkeley: University of California Press, c. 1998. Englishman Howard Staunton's match victory over another Frenchman, Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, in 1843 is considered to have established Staunton as the world's strongest player,"From Morphy to Fischer", Israel Horowitz, (Batsford, 1973) p.3 at least in England and France. By the 1830s, players from Germany and more generally Central Europe were beginning to appear on the scene: the strongest of the Berlin players around 1840 was probably Ludwig Bledow, co-founder of the Berlin Pleiades.David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess, Oxford University Press, 1992 (2nd edition), p.44. . The earliest recorded use of the term "World Champion" was in 1845, when Staunton was described as "the Chess Champion of England, or ... the Champion of the World".The Earl of Mexborough's speech to the meeting of Yorkshire Chess Clubs, as reported in the 1845 Chess Player's Chronicle (with the cover date 1846) –
From 1851 to 1886
An important milestone was the London 1851 chess tournament, which was the first international chess tournament, organised by Staunton. It was played as a series of matches, and was won convincingly by the German Adolf Anderssen, including a 4–1 semi-final win over Staunton. This established Anderssen as the world's leading player."From Morphy to Fischer", Israel Horowitz, (Batsford, 1973) p.4 In 1893, Henry Bird retrospectively awarded the title of first world chess champion to Anderssen for his victory,Section "Progress of Chess" in but there is no evidence that he was widely acclaimed as such at the time, and no mention of such a status afterwards in the tournament book by Staunton. Indeed, Staunton's tournament book calls Anderssen "after Heydebrand der Laza [Tassilo von der Lasa, another of the Berlin Pleiades], the best player of Germany": von der Lasa was unable to attend the 1851 tournament, though he was invited. This can be viewed online at or downloaded as PDF from In 1851, Anderssen lost a match to von der Lasa; in 1856, George Walker wrote that "[von der Lasa] and Anderssen are decidedly the two best in the known world".Bell's Life in London, 24 February 1856, p. 5 Von der Lasa did not compete in tournaments or formal matches because of the demands of his diplomatic career, but his games show that he was one of the world's best then: he won series of games against Staunton in 1844 and 1853.David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess, Oxford University Press, 1992 (2nd edition), pp.216–217. .
Anderssen was himself decisively beaten in an 1858 match against the American Paul Morphy (7–2, 2 draws). In 1858–59 Morphy played matches against several leading players, beating them all.1858–59 Paul Morphy Matches , Mark Weeks' Chess Pages This prompted some commentators at the time to call him the world champion:Early Uses of 'World Chess Champion' , Edward G. Winter, 2007 Gabriel-Éloy Doazan, who knew Morphy, wrote that "one can and...must place [him] in the same bracket" as Deschapelles and La Bourdonnais, who Doazan had played years before, and that "his superiority is as obvious as theirs". But when Morphy returned to America in 1859, he abruptly retired from chess, though many considered him the world champion until his death in 1884. His sudden withdrawal from chess at his peak led to his being known as "the pride and sorrow of chess".
After Morphy's retirement from chess, Anderssen was again regarded as the world's strongest active player,"From Morphy to Fischer", Israel Horowitz, (Batsford, 1973) p.16 a reputation he reinforced by winning the strong London 1862 chess tournament. Louis Paulsen and Ignatz Kolisch were also playing at a comparable standard to Anderssen in the 1860s: Anderssen narrowly won a match against Kolisch in 1861, and drew against Paulsen in 1862.
In 1866, Wilhelm Steinitz narrowly defeated Anderssen in a match (8–6, 0 draws). However, he was not immediately able to conclusively demonstrate his superiority. Steinitz placed third at the Paris 1867 chess tournament, behind Kolisch and Szymon Winawer; he placed second at the Dundee 1867 tournament, behind Gustav Neumann; and he again placed second at the Baden-Baden 1870 chess tournament, which was the strongest that had been held to date (Anderssen came first, and won twice against Steinitz). Steinitz confirmed his standing as the world's leading player by winning the London 1872 tournament, winning a match against Johannes Zukertort in 1872 (7–1, 4 draws), winning the Vienna 1873 chess tournament and decisively winning a match over Joseph Henry Blackburne 7–0 (0 draws) in 1876.
Apart from the Blackburne match, Steinitz played no competitive chess between the Vienna 1873 chess tournament and Vienna 1882 chess tournament. During that time, Zukertort emerged as the world's leading active player, winning the Paris 1878 chess tournament. Zukertort then won the London 1883 chess tournament by a convincing 3-point margin, ahead of nearly every leading player in the world, with Steinitz finishing second.1883 London Tournament , Mark Weeks' Chess PagesDavid Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess, Oxford University Press, 1992 (2nd edition), p.459. . This tournament established Steinitz and Zukertort as the best two players in the world, and led to a match between these two, the World Chess Championship 1886,"The Centenary Match, Kasparov–Karpov III", Raymond Keene and David Goodman, Batsford 1986, p.9 won by Steinitz.