FIDE Presidential Race: The Promise to Bring Magnus Carlsen Home and Shadows in the Dark

On September 26, 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, a vote will decide the future of world chess. Not on the chessboard, but in the General Assembly hall of the International Chess Federation (FIDE). Three candidates — all entrepreneurs, not professional sports officials — are competing for a seat that the incumbent had to vacate not out of ambition, but because of European Union sanctions. Arkady Dvorkovich, the incumbent President, was placed on the EU sanctions list. He left in silence, leaving behind an organization facing three simultaneous crises: externally forced leadership transition, a legal dispute with Russia and Belarus at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and conflict-of-interest exposure within the candidate ranks. Wadim Rosenstein, a German-Russian entrepreneur, entered the race with the loudest promise: bring Magnus Carlsen back to the classical Championship cycle. Carlsen, since 2026, has refused to defend his world classical title for the fifth time. He shifted to freestyle, rapid, blitz, and streaming — building a personal commercial empire outside the FIDE system. Carlsen currently tops the world rankings with a rating of approximately 2830, while Hikaru Nakamura — the potential ally Rosenstein claims to have the "best relations with" — holds the second spot at approximately 2790-2800. But both are absent from or standing at the edge of the classical cycle, while the title continues to be contested as if they never existed. This is the core contradiction that the in-depth analysis from Reuters on September 18 has highlighted: the world number one and number two are no longer at the center, while the championship moves forward as if they never existed.