FIDE General Assembly in Samarkand elects Timur Turlov president and creates a Chess960 rating system

1 October 2026

The International Chess Federation published on 1 October 2026 the main decisions of its 2026 General Assembly, held on 26 and 27 September 2026 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, during the 46th Chess Olympiad.
Timur Turlov was elected President of FIDE and Viswanathan Anand was elected Deputy President; four Vice-Presidents were also elected.
The Assembly approved the creation of a FIDE rating system for Fischer Random Chess, also called Chess960, to be elaborated and implemented no later than 1 June 2027.
It cleared the appointment of up to five Honorary Vice-Presidents who may take part in the work of the Council with all rights except voting.
It amended the FIDE Charter so that the English and French institutional names, International Chess Federation and Federation Internationale des Echecs, are presented jointly.
It noted the readiness of both the Qatar Chess Association and the Georgia Chess Federation to host the 2030 Chess Olympiad and instructed the FIDE Management Board to negotiate with Qatar first, the right to sign passing to Georgia if the required official guarantees are not provided; an Extraordinary General Assembly was set to meet online in late 2026 to review the 2027 and provisional 2028 budgets.