World No. 1 and five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen has shared his thoughts on the players competing in the 2026 Candidates Tournament. According to the former world champion, Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa is the third strongest contender to win the event.
Carlsen believes that Praggnanandhaa has a good chance, but still ranks him behind two American players. The Candidates Tournament is very important in chess. The winner earns the right to challenge the current World Champion. This time, the champion is India’s D Gukesh. Eight top players will take part in the tournament, and Praggnanandhaa is the only Indian among them.The 2026 Candidates Tournament will begin on March 28 in Cyprus. Carlsen feels that Americans Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana are the top favourites. After them, he places Praggnanandhaa. He also said that there is a clear gap between these three and the rest of the field. “Just like last time, probably the Americans are the favourites. Then we got Pragg as the third favorite, and then probably a pretty big drop off after that. Wei Yi is really good, but I don’t think he’s capable of winning enough games to win the Candidates. So it will be interesting to see,” Carlsen told Chess.com in an interview. Apart from Nakamura, Caruana, and Praggnanandhaa, the tournament will include Anish Giri from the Netherlands, Matthias Bluebaum from Germany, Javokhir Sindarov from Uzbekistan, Wei Yi from China, and Andrey Esipenko from Russia. Carlsen also spoke about players who missed out on qualifying. He feels that some strong names deserved a place in the Candidates. “I would have loved to see some more big names in the field, but then again, if you didn’t qualify, you didn’t qualify. Maybe this system should kind of account for somebody like Vincent Keymer, who was really close to qualifying a lot of times and has the highest rating of anybody who’s not there. He certainly deserved to be there, but I guess he and Arjun and a few others will have to await their returns. It’s always interesting to follow,” Carlsen added.
