D Gukesh has been hogging the spotlight at the ongoing Tata Steel Masters chess tournament. The reigning world champion has been the main attraction, and has been flocked by fans on his way out of the venue everyday. The 18-year-old became the youngest-ever world champion last month when he defeated Ding Liren in Singapore.
The championship reached the decisive fourteenth game, and it was going according to Liren’s plan, who was trying to enforce a tie-breaker. But a massive blunder by the Chinese grandmaster in the 55th move saw him resign in a historic defeat to Gukesh. But after the win, Gukesh knew that he still wasn’t the best in the world, and he revealed that it was Magnus Carlsen, who famously decided not to defend his title against Ian Nepomniachtchi at the 2023 C’ship.
The World No. 1 cited lack of motivation, and revealed he preferred tournaments over championship matches. Meanwhile, he also didn’t enter the cycle for the World Chess Championship 2024. After Gukesh’s win vs Liren, Carlsen stated that he would not be challenging for the title after the Indian grandmaster publicly called him out.
Magnus Carlsen to rejoin the World C’ship cycle?
But now it looks like Carlsen has had a change of mind, and the Norwegian made a massive revelation to Chess24 recently. He has also been commenting on some Tata Masters matches for Chess24. He said, “I have great memories of playing Tata Steel Chess. It’s been like a detox of the soul coming to play chess for 3 weeks… In the last few years, I’ve been less and less enchanted with the prospect of playing classical. Maybe playing one last time for the road would be good.”
He also said, “Maybe not that much, when I am looking at these top players play, I always somehow think I want to play them but, I don’t know. I am very happy being a spectator for now. I am very grateful for everything that this tournament has done and I certainly don’t rule out coming back.”
The Tata Steel Masters is also part of the FIDE cycle. If Carlsen does rejoin the FIDE World C’ship cycle, he is expected to challenge Gukesh for the world championship title. But for that to happen, he will need to win the 2026 Candidates Tournament.
The participants at the Candidates Tournament are Fabiano Caruana (winner of the 2024 FIDE Circuit), top-two finishers in the FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament 2025, top-three finishers at the Chess World Cup 2025, winner of the 2025 FIDE Circuit and the highest rating averaged player (from August 2025 to January 2026). The next world championship in the classical format will be held in 2026, and the winner of the Candidates will take on Gukesh.
