The tournament featured eight out of the top ten players from the FIDE rating list published in August 2016; only former World Champion Vishwanathan Anand and Levon Aronian were missing the Olympiad. Among the players who were playing in the open section were the World Champion and highest rated player in the world Magnus Carlsen, the challenger in the World Chess Championship 2016 Sergey Karjakin as well as the former World Champions Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov. Grandmaster Eugenio Torre was in the line-up of the Philippines for the record twenty-third time, having played on each Chess Olympiad since 1970 except in Dresden in 2008. On the other hand, Ukraine were weaker for Vassily Ivanchuk, who does not play for the first time after 14 consecutive Olympiads (1988-2014) and 13 appearances on board one (1990-2014). The former World Champion Challenger and leader of the Israeli team in 8 consecutive Olympiads (2000-2014) Boris Gelfand was also missing the Olympiad following a conflict with the Israeil Chess Federation management.