Fabiano Caruana confirms his ticket to Candidates 2026!

Grandmaster Fabiano Caruana has won the FIDE Circuit 2024 race ahead of Arjun Erigaisi to confirm his 6th consecutive ticket to the FIDE Candidates Tournament! Fabiano is the first player to qualify for the upcoming Candidates.

Caruana has been at the top of the chess world for about a decade now, and his participation in the 2026 Candidates will mark a 10-year streak of him qualifying for EVERY FIDE Candidates Tournament. Fabiano is making a serious case for the “strongest player who never became the World Champion“, says a user on Reddit.

A very tight race was witnessed by the chess world between the American Super GM, India #1 Arjun Erigaisi and the likes of Abdusattorov and Firouzja for the FIDE Circuit this year. With Fabi trying to improve his score by playing two, rare, back-to-back Open Tournaments, and Arjun entering Qatar Masters at the last moment, the Circuit winner title could have gone either way with the World Rapid Championship yet to take place. Going into the final day of the World Rapid Championship, Arjun Erigaisi saw himself in a 4-way tie for first place, keeping his chances of becoming the World Champion and qualifying to the Candidates alive. A fairy tale was right there at the corner, but it was not to be for the Indian. Arjun finished #5 with (9/13), scoring 2/4 on the final day, a full point behind the winner Volodar Murzin! Caruana didn’t have the most memorable outing either having scored only 8.5 points out of 13. Eventually, things worked out for Fabiano, and now he is officially the first player to have qualified for the 2026 FIDE Candidates.

Here is the final leaderboard of the Circuit and Fabiano’s 7 tournaments which contributed to his overall score of 130.42:

There will be another exciting race in 2025 for the rest of the Candidates spots through various routes, another one being via Circuit. With the recently proposed alterations by FIDE for Circuit 2025, it will be interesting to follow which player is able to show his mettle the best and make it one step closer to becoming a World Championship Challenger!

Picture Courtesy: FIDE (International Chess Federation)

Read the article on proposed alterations to the FIDE Circuit: https://chess.ninja/fide-proposes-changes-to-fide-circuit/