In January, at the 2016 Tata Steel Chess Tournament, Caruana shared second (along with Ding Liren) with a score of 8 points out of 13 (+5-2=6), defeating Michael Adams, Wei Yi, Loek Van Wely, Pavel Eljanov, and Ding Liren, and losing to David Navara and Evgeny Tomashevsky. Had he defeated Tomashevsky, he would have at least tied for 1st place with Magnus Carlsen. Through this tournament, he gained 7 rating points and moved to #3 in the world. By March, as part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Championship 2016, Caruana participated in the Candidates Tournament 2016, held in Moscow, Russia, from March 10–30 in the Central Telegraph (Центральный телеграф) Building. The lineup of the tournament included Viswanathan Anand, Hikaru Nakamura, Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler, Veselin Topalov, Anish Giri, and Levon Aronian. In the final round Caruana had Black against Sergey Karjakin in a winner-takes-all game. A complex position developed in which he made a mistake and was eventually defeated, making Karjakin the official challenger. Caruana eventually finished with a +1 score. On April 25, Caruana became US Chess Champion for the first time, after defeating IM Akshat Chandra in the last round of the US Chess Championship. He finished the tournament with 8.5 points out of 11 games, and went undefeated. The field consisted of world top ten players Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So; top 100 players Ray Robson, Sam Shankland, Gata Kamsky, and Alexander Onischuk; GMs Alexander Shabalov, Varuzhan Akobian, Jeffery Xiong and Aleksandr Lenderman; and IM Akshat Chandra. In September, he played first board of the US Team at the 42nd Chess Olympiad. The US team won the gold medal, while Caruana won the bronze medal for first board.