The most on the list
We counted the grandmasters on FIDE's November 2026 standard list, country by country. A player is active if they have played at least one rated game in the past year.
| Place | Country | Grandmasters | Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 184 | 74 |
| 2 | United States | 115 | 73 |
| 3 | Germany | 103 | 74 |
| 4 | India | 97 | 74 |
| 5 | Ukraine | 85 | 51 |
| 6 | Spain | 60 | 45 |
| 6 | France | 60 | 51 |
| 8 | Serbia | 58 | 52 |
| 9 | China | 57 | 38 |
| 10 | Poland | 56 | 47 |
Altogether, 1,904 grandmasters are on the list: 1,864 from 91 countries and 38 under FIDE's own flag, and 2 have no federation. Only those who play for a country are counted in the table.
What the numbers say, and what they don't
The list only has players who have a rating now. Players who have died are no longer on it, so not everyone who ever earned the title is included.
The country is the federation a player belongs to today, which isn't always the country where they earned the title. Sweden, for example, has 25 grandmasters on the list, and three of them earned the title for other countries.
Women
44 of the grandmasters on the list are women. What the title takes is under What is a grandmaster?
Sources
- FIDE: the standard rating list, November 2026 (the file standard_rating_list, downloaded and counted November 8, 2026; the title and federation columns)
- FIDE: Rating Regulations, effective from March 1, 2024 (what an active player is)
- Swedish Chess Federation: Swedish grandmasters; FIDE player profiles
The facts on this page come from the sources above and, where possible, were checked across several sources. Where the sources disagree, we say less or say what each one says. A number that is an estimate says whose it is, and a counted number comes with its date.
Updated November 14, 2026