With roots dating back 1,500 years, chess is one of the oldest board games in the world and became a symbol of technological advancements when Deep Blue , IBM's artificial intelligence, defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in a historic match in the late 1990s.
Today, chess and the digital world are closer than ever. In 2025, the game was included as an official modality of the Esports World Cup, one of the largest esports competitions on the planet, held annually since 2024 in Saudi Arabia . The last edition attracted 3 million visitors to Boulevard Riyadh City, an entertainment complex in the Saudi capital.
Inclusion was a natural consequence of the digitization of the game, driven mainly by the popularity of Chess.com, the world's largest online chess platform. Of the 600 million people who play the sport, 250 million are users of the site, according to research by the International Chess Federation (FIDE).
“A few years ago, Chess.com had 100 million users. This shows how quickly the game entered the digital mainstream . Today, hundreds of millions are playing online and on their mobile phone screens,” says Fabian Scheuermann, chief games officer of the Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF), in an interview with NeoFeed .
At the Esports World Cup, chess made its debut with a final between Norwegian Magnus Carlsen and Iranian-Frenchman Alireza Firouzja, two of the biggest names in the sport today. Carlsen, 35, won the match. He gained notoriety as a teenager when, at age 13, he drew a game against Kasparov.
Chess has made a strong entrance into the Esports World Cup. Teams aiming to score points in the Club Championship ranking, based on the sum of results from all disciplines, now depend on the points earned by their chess players.
In the 2025 competition, Carlsen competed for Team Liquid, one of the most traditional organizations in the esports universe. Originally from the Netherlands, the team was founded in 2000 and has representatives in various game genres around the world.
In Brazil, Team Liquid maintains a training center in the city of São Paulo, which serves as accommodation and development for its athletes.
“The success achieved by these clubs allows them to invest even more in their chess divisions, which inspires other teams to seek out great talent, creating more competitive and professional opportunities for high-level players and new talents around the world,” says Scheuermann.
To bring together the biggest stars in the sport, the Esports World Cup offered a prize pool of US$1.5 million for the chess tournament — an amount that surpasses that of traditional competitions, such as Norway Chess and the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, which distribute around €300,000 and €200,000 (approximately US$230,000 and US$350,000), respectively.
The competition's relevance within the global chess circuit was also evident in the audience figures. According to Scheuermann, the tournament accumulated over 3 million hours watched, with a peak of approximately 245,000 simultaneous viewers, making it the second most-watched chess championship of the year.
If visibility and million-dollar prizes were key factors in attracting some of the biggest eSports stars to the Riyadh tournament, the inclusion of chess represents not only the chance to incorporate fans of another game into the circuit, but also to break down barriers and serve as a bridge to attract a new type of spectator to eSports.
“Chess is one of those games that almost everyone understands to some extent. This familiarity makes it easier for new viewers and esports fans to engage with the event without having to learn a whole new set of rules,” explains the executive.
For this year's Cup, scheduled to take place between July and August, again in Riyadh, Carlsen is the only player with a guaranteed spot in the competition.
The remaining participants will be ranked through Chess.com tournaments, such as the Speed Chess Championship , the Chess.com Global Championship, and the Champions Chess Tour ranking. There will also be in-person qualifiers held in the Saudi capital.
There is an expectation that the Brazilian grandmaster Luís Paulo Supi, who has already defeated Magnus Carlsen, will participate in the competition.
In addition to chess being featured for the second consecutive year in the Saudi Arabia tournament, the Esports World Cup Foundation confirmed that the game will also be part of the Esports Nations Cup, a new championship organized by the entity. In this tournament, competitors will represent their countries, rather than esports teams.
The competition is expected to bring together 128 players, divided into national teams. According to the organizers, the Cup should broaden the presence of players from different regions and create new narratives within the competitive chess calendar.
