FIDE has announced the shortlists for its brand new Excellence Awards, eleven categories, ten nominees each, covering everything from Best Chess Player to Best Federation to Best Chess Initiative. It's the first time FIDE has tried anything like this, a proper end-of-cycle awards show for the whole sport rather than just the World Championship, and the shortlists cover achievements from September 2024 through August 2026.
Public nominations ran through June, a Jury (appointed by the FIDE President with the Management Board and the Awards Working Group) verified and whittled them down, and the ten-per-category shortlists below are the result. Next stage is a separate Awards Panel, who'll review and vote on an actual winner in each category. Results get announced at a ceremony in Samarkand in September 2026, timed to run alongside the 46th Chess Olympiad.
Best Chess Player (Male)
Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Fabiano Caruana, Magnus Carlsen, Arjun Erigaisi, Alireza Firouzja, Anish Giri, Gukesh Dommaraju, Vincent Keymer, R Praggnanandhaa, Javokhir Sindarov.
Best Chess Player (Female)
Bibisara Assaubayeva, Divya Deshmukh, Aleksandra Goryachkina, Koneru Humpy, Lei Tingjie, Anna Muzychuk, Tan Zhongyi, Vaishali Rameshbabu, Ju Wenjun, Zhu Jiner.
Best Tournament (Open)
Abu Dhabi Chess Festival, Aeroflot Open, Dubai Open, Grenke Freestyle Chess Open, Open Chess Menorca, Prague International Chess Festival Open, Qatar Masters Open, Reykjavik Open, Sharjah Masters, U.S. Open Chess Championship.
Best Tournament (Round-robin)
Biel Chess Festival, Cairns Cup, Grand Chess Tour, London Chess Classic, Norway Chess, Prague International Chess Festival, Sinquefield Cup, Tata Steel Chess Tournament, TePe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament, UzChess Cup.
Best Federation
Chinese Chess Association, Colombian Chess Federation, Georgian Chess Federation, All India Chess Federation, Italian Chess Federation, Kazakhstan Chess Federation, Chess Kenya, Chess Federation of Serbia, Turkish Chess Federation, Uzbekistan Chess Federation.
Best Chess Initiative
Armenian School Chess Programme, Chess for Freedom, Chess for Protection, Chess in Schools and Communities, ChessBase India Foundation, Freedom Asian Chess Initiatives, FIDE Infinite Chess Project, Kasparov Chess Foundation Africa, Queens' Online Chess Festival, The Gift of Chess.
Best Team
Ashdod Elit Chess Club, China (Open and Women's National Teams), Dragon Chilling, Hexamind Chess Team, India (Open and Women's National Teams), Kazakhstan (Open and Women's National Teams), Team MGD1, United States (Open National Team), Uzbekistan (Open National Team), WR Chess Team.
Best Breakthrough (Rookie of the Year)
Divya Deshmukh, Yağız Kaan Erdoğmuş, Faustino Oro, Gukesh Dommaraju, Anastasiia Hnatyshyn, Vincent Keymer, Volodar Murzin, Javokhir Sindarov, Andy Woodward, Zhu Jiner.
Best Comeback
Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Ding Liren, Vladimir Fedoseev, Pentala Harikrishna, Vasyl Ivanchuk, Parham Maghsoodloo, Anna Muzychuk, Tan Zhongyi, Wei Yi.
Best Chess Player with a Disability
Jennitha Anto, Artom Andriienko, Griffin McConnell, Jamal Messala, Natasha Morales Santos, Łukasz Nowak, Jesus Osorio, Handenur Şahin, Marcin Tazbir, Jessica Lauser.
One category isn't just called "Best Creator" this year. FIDE has renamed it The Daniel Naroditsky Best Creator Award, in memory of Danya, who passed away in October 2025. The shortlist itself sits inside that dedication: Alexandra and Andrea Botez, Anna Cramling, ChessBase India, ChessBrah, Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, Leontxo García, Hikaru Nakamura, Levy Rozman, Sagar Shah, and Simon Williams. FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich said the naming fulfils a promise made shortly after Naroditsky's death to establish a prize in his memory.
That's a genuinely enormous list of names to get through, and worth saying plainly, if you're a club player scrolling this hoping to spot someone you follow, you probably will. That's rather the point of a first-ever awards show covering two years of the entire sport. Full details, the jury, and the selection process are all on FIDE's own awards site if you want to dig further.