The Candidates Tournament is a chess tournament organized by FIDE, chess's international governing body, since 1950, as the final contest to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship. The winner of the Candidates earns the right to a match for the World Championship against the incumbent World Champion. Before 1993 it was contested as a triennial tournament; almost always held every third year from 1950 to 1992 inclusive. After the split of the World Championship in the early 1990s, the cycles were disrupted, even after the reunification of the titles in 2006. Since 2013 it has settled into a 2-year cycle: qualification for Candidates during the odd numbered year, Candidates played early in the even numbered year, and the World Championship match played late in the even numbered year. After the FIDE World Chess Candidates tournament that took place in March 2018, the next one began in Yekaterinburg, Russia on 17 March 2020, but was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic after half the rounds had been played. It will be resumed at a later date not yet determined.
Precursors
Before 1950, a number of tournaments acted as de facto candidates tournaments:
The number of players in the tournament varied over the years, between eight and fifteen players. Most of these qualified from Interzonal tournaments, though some gained direct entry without having to play the Interzonal. The first Interzonal/Candidates World Championship cycle began in 1948. Before 1965, the tournament was organized in a round-robin format. From 1965 on, the tournament was played as knockout matches, spread over several months. In 1995-1996, the defending FIDE champion also entered the Candidates, in the semi-finals, so the winner was the FIDE world champion. During its 1993 to 2006 split from FIDE, the "Classical" World Championship also held three Candidates Tournaments under a different sponsor and a different format each time. In one of these cases no title match eventuated, under disputed circumstances. After the reunification of titles in 2006, FIDE tried different Candidates formats in 2007, 2009 and 2011, before settling on an 8 player, double round robin Candidates tournament from 2013 onwards.
Results of Candidates Tournaments
The tables below show the qualifiers and results for all interzonal, Candidates and world championship tournaments.
Players shown bracketed in italics qualified for the Candidates or were seeded in the Candidates, but did not play.
Players shown in italics with an asterisk were excluded from the Candidates by a rule limiting the number of players from one country.
Players listed after players in italics only qualified due to the non-participation of the bracketed players or players with an asterisk.
The "Seeded into Final" column usually refers to the incumbent champion, but this has a different meaning for the World Chess Championship 1948, in which five players were seeded into the championship tournament, the Classical World Chess Championship 2000 in which two players were seeded into the championship final, the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 in which eight players were seeded into the final championship tournament, and the FIDE World Chess Championship 2007, in which four players were seeded into the final championship tournament.
Interzonal and Candidates tournaments (1948–1996)
Split titles (1997–2006)
After 1996, interzonals ceased to exist, but FIDE continued to organize qualifying zonal tournaments.
Reunified title (since 2007)
After the reunification of the FIDE and "classical" titles, the Chess World Cup and FIDE Grand Prix series were introduced as qualification for the Candidates Tournament. The Swiss-system FIDE Grand Swiss was introduced in the latter half of 2019, acting as another qualification path for the 2020 Candidates Tournament.
