2025 Chess World Cup Pairings: 206 players have their matchups set

Posted on October 9, 2025 BY Michael Ludwig

The 2025 Chess World Cup commences on October 31st in Goa, India. This week, FIDE has released the competition bracket, so players and fans can prepare and forecast potential matchups.

Reigning Chess World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju is granted the top seed, followed by Arjun Erigaisi and R Praggnanandhaa. None of the world’s top three — Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, and Fabiano Caruana — have opted to play, which is undoubtedly related to their standing with regards to the Candidates (Carlsen won’t be playing, Caruana has qualified, and Nakamura surely will qualify via the rating spot). The top three finishers in the World Cup will qualify for the 2026 Candidates.

Alireza Firouzja, ranked sixth, also won’t be participating, nor will Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun.

The top 50 seeds are given byes to the second round. 22 players rated 2700 are playing, if you would like a rough estimate of the number of contenders in the 206-person field.

Notable potential matchups include:

  • If the top seeds all made it to the last 16, Gukesh’s path to the final would be through Javokhir Sindarov, then Nodirbek Abdusattorov, then Anish Giri.
  • Anish Giri (4th seed) and Matthias Bluebaum (29th), the two Grand Swiss Candidates qualifiers, are in the same section and would face off in the fourth round.
  • Vincent Keymer (6th), having just missed out on the Candidates at the Grand Swiss, most likely has to make it past Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (11th) or Nihal Sarin (22nd) to set up a match with Praggnanandhaa in the quarterfinal.
  • Divya Deshmukh (150th) begins against Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis (107th) and would be Sarin’s first opponent, should she win.
  • 11-year-old Faustino Oro (147th) begins against Ante Brkić (110th) and would face Vidit Gujrathi (19th) in the second round should he win.
  • 14-year-old Yağız Kaan Erdoğmuş (51st) is in the other half of the same 1/16th section as Oro, so likely just too far away to see a match between two of the world’s top prodigies.

Wikipedia allows for a very convenient viewing of the entire bracket, plus plenty of other event info. Chess Ninja will have lots more coverage as the tournament begins.

Graphic via FIDE

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