Javokhir Sindarov

The way there

Sindarov met the requirements for the grandmaster title in 2018, at 12. At the 2022 Chess Olympiad in Chennai he played third board for Uzbekistan, which won gold, and scored 6½ points out of 10. On FIDE's December 2023 list he reached 2700 for the first time.

At the World Cup in Goa, India, in the autumn of 2025 he reached the final against Wei Yi. The two classical games were drawn, and so was the first rapid game. Sindarov won the second with Black. Nobody younger had won the open World Cup.

In January 2026 he came second in the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee without a loss, half a point behind his compatriot Nodirbek Abdusattorov. That autumn Uzbekistan won the Chess Olympiad at home in Samarkand. Sindarov played second board, scored 7 points out of 10, and also won bronze on his board.

The title match

The match against Gukesh Dommaraju is played in Geneva. Under FIDE's regulations for the match, the first game is on November 24, 2026. It runs to at most fourteen games, and the first to 7½ points wins. Any tiebreak is played on December 12. Both will be 20 when it begins, and no title match in the open section has had two players so young. This page will be updated once the match has been played.