The tournament featured nine out of the top ten players from the FIDE rating list published in September 2018 with only the current World Champion Magnus Carlsen being absent. Former World Champion Vishwanathan Anand returned to the Chess Olympiads on board one for India following a break of twelve years. Other players who are playing in the open section include the former World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik, the upcoming challenger in the World Chess Championship 2018 Fabiano Caruana, as well as the former challengers Sergey Karjakin and Boris Gelfand. Grandmaster Eugenio Torre, who was in the line-up of the Philippines for a record twenty-three times in the 1970-2016 period and was the highest-scoring player at the 42nd Chess Olympiad, decided not to play and was named coach of the Philippines national team in the open section. Former FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov was not playing because a dispute between chess officials caused de-recognition of the Bulgarian Chess Federation by FIDE.