Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour

The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour is a series of Chess960 tournaments in 2025 organized by Freestyle Chess Operations. It will consist of five "Grand Slam" tournaments following a format similar to the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge, held in 2024. Players will score points based on placement in each event. The player with the highest score at the end of the year will become the Freestyle Chess Champion.
The tour was co-founded by five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and German investor Jan Henric Buettner. Carlsen has been an advocate for Chess960 as an alternative to classical chess that eliminates opening preparation and theory. In July 2024, Left Lane Capital invested $12 million in the venture. From November 20 to 22, Carlsen played a two-game Chess960 exhibition match with Fabiano Caruana in Singapore, ahead of the World Chess Championship 2024 (which neither played in), winning 1½-½.
One player qualifies to each Grand Slam via an online play-in held on Chess.com. The play-ins consist of three stages:
The first grand slam had 10 participants. Afterwards, the number of participants was increased to 12 for each following grand slam. Only the winner of the play-ins qualifies, the rest of the participants are determined by other qualification criteria and wildcards. For the final grand slam, the 12 players with the most accumulated grand slam points up to that point are qualified.
Each grand slam begins with a rapid round-robin stage. The time control for the round-robin stage is 10 minutes with an increment of 10 seconds per move. No draw offers are allowed until move 40.
The players finishing 1-8 in the round robin stage qualify for the single-elimination classical time control stage, with players 1-4 being seeded. Starting with player 1, they choose their opponent for the quarter finals from players 5-8. In the semifinals, the winners of the quarterfinals involving players 1 and 4 face each other, while the winners of the quarterfinals involving players 2 and 3 play the other match. The losers from the quarter-finals determine their final rankings in a fifth-place play-off, while losers from the semi-finals meet in a third-place play-off.
The players finishing 9-12 in the round robin stage play a separate single-elimination classical time control stage for 9th place. Similar to above, players 9 and 10 are seeded with player 9 choosing their opponent from players 11 and 12. The winners play a match for 9th place, while the losers finish in a joint 11th place. Afterwards, the four players are required to perform commentary for the knockout stage. Refusal to do so results in a 50% reduction of their prize money.
Each match in the classical time control stage a best of two games. The time control is 90 minutes with an increment of 30 seconds per move. No draw offers are allowed until after move 40. The higher-seeded player starts the match with black in the first game. In the event of a tie, the tiebreak is two 10+10 rapid games followed by two 5+2 blitz games if the tie persists, and then one armageddon game with bidding.
Prize money is awarded as follows:
The scoring system over the whole tour is described in § Standings below.
While the fourth Grand Slam is currently scheduled to take place in Delhi from September 17 to 24, Buettner stated in an interview that the venue might be changed due to lack of investor interest.
Additionally, Freestyle Chess has announced that some non-Grand Slam events will still award Grand Slam points, beginning with a Freestyle edition of the annual Grenke Chess Open on April 17–21, 2025.
Grand slam points are awarded to the top ten players in each Grand Slam as well as the 2025 Grenke Freestyle Chess Open. In the Grand Slam Final, double points are awarded.
On December 21, 2024, the Freestyle Chess Players Club issued a press release on Twitter stating an agreement on a "friendly co-existence" with FIDE, and ongoing discussions "regarding the mutual recognition of future World Championship titles". FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich replied stating that the press release "includes significant inaccuracies that mispresent the situation" and that FIDE will issue a further statement on the matter. Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik questioned the recognition of "a private event (with all respect) as official WC [sic]", and the involvement of Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Chess.com, and exclusion of World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, in the agreement.
On December 27, in an interview with Levy Rozman after withdrawing from the World Rapid Championship over a dress code dispute, Carlsen accused FIDE of "going after players to get them not to sign with Freestyle" and "threatening them that they wouldn't be able to play the World Championship Cycle if they played in Freestyle". Carlsen's claims were supported by Nakamura. FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky denied the claims on Twitter, stating "the claim that FIDE threatened players who were willing to participate in Freestyle Chess Tour is a lie" and "the only thing we insisted on - no Series or Tour can be called World Championship unless FIDE approves it. FIDE is the governing body of chess, and any World Championship should either be conducted or approved by FIDE".
In an interview with Sagar Shah on January 15, 2025, President Dvorkovich reiterated Sutovsky's statement, adding "...we are very open about finding a solution, and we believe it is about the goodwill from the side of our potential partners. I took the decision to wave a possibility of sanctioning players for 2025 participating in this event since formally, according to the contracts, we can impose some sanctions. However, I do not want to go this way. I do not want to threaten players; I do not want to put them in the difficult position. It is just a signal of our goodwill to find a solution here." In a statement on January 21, FIDE said "the attempts by FCPC to present their project as a World Championship are in contradiction with the well-established status of FIDE and its authority over world championship titles in all relevant variations of chess - including Chess960/Freestyle chess, as outlined in the FIDE Handbook" and "The steps taken by the FCPC project unavoidably lead to divisions in the chess world - and we remember all too well the unfortunate consequences of a similar split that happened in the not so distant past" (referencing the 1993 split between FIDE and the PCA). They clarified that they will not sanction players who participate in the 2025 Freestyle tour. However, players who have qualified to the ongoing 2025–26 World Championship cycle are expected to sign an additional contract, which will include "a clause indicating that participation in any alternative world chess championships in any variation of chess not approved by FIDE would lead to their withdrawal from the two consecutive FIDE World Championship cycles".
On February 10, 2025, twelve members of the Freestyle Chess Players Club met at the Weissenhaus resort with organizer Jan Henric Buettner, "unanimously deciding that the 2025 Grand Slam Tour winner will be titled Freestyle Chess Champion". They planned to form an independent association to represent their interests.