Gukesh defends the title against Sindarov

World champion Gukesh D plays Javokhir Sindarov for the world title. They meet at the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny, a small town beside Geneva, Switzerland. Both will be 20 years old. No world championship match has started with two players this young.

The match

The opening is on 22 November. The first game is on 24 November. They play up to 14 slow games. The first to 7.5 points wins. If the score is 7–7 after those games, they play faster games the next day.

Cologny is not the city of Geneva. It is a small town next to it, on a hill above the lake. This is the first world championship match in Switzerland since Brissago in 2004. Salesforce is paying to put its name on the match, so the full name is the Salesforce FIDE World Championship.

Gukesh and Sindarov

Gukesh won the title in Singapore in December 2024. He beat Ding Liren 7.5–6.5 in the last game. He was 18, the youngest world champion. Cologny is the first time he has to defend it.

Sindarov got here by winning the 2026 Candidates in Cyprus. He did not lose a game and scored 10 points out of 14. Earlier he won the 2025 World Cup, and he is the first player from Uzbekistan to play for the world title.

They were both at the 2026 Olympiad in Samarkand. Sindarov’s Uzbekistan won gold. Gukesh’s India took silver. A match is harder than a team event: one opponent, for about three weeks, and only one title.

How it is played

Each slow game gives 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 30 more minutes. From move 41, they also get 30 extra seconds after every move. They cannot offer a draw before move 40.

If the score is still 7–7 on 12 December, they play shorter games until someone wins: first 15 minutes each, then 10, then 3. The prize fund is 2.5 million dollars. A win in a single game is worth 200,000 dollars to that player.

What Cologny is

Cologny is a small town in Switzerland, next to the city of Geneva. It sits on a hill above Lake Geneva. The match is not in the city centre. It is at the Fondation Martin Bodmer, a library and museum in that town. The building looks out over the lake.

FIDE picked it so the match would be on neutral ground. India, the United States, and Cyprus also wanted to host. Tickets and the TV plan will be announced later.

What to take from it

Gukesh has to show he can keep the title. Sindarov has to show he can win a long match, not only a tournament. They play the same person again and again, so one new idea has to work the next day too.

Those games are useful to study. A master can show which openings are worth copying and which only work at this level. Chess with Masters is where you book a titled coach and work through them with your own games.