FIDE votes on 26 September 2026: Three businessmen, a pledge to bring Carlsen back, and the conflict-of-interest trap

On 26 September 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, several hundred national chess federation delegates will vote for the next FIDE president. Three names sit on the ballot: Wadim Rosenstein, Jan Henric Buettner, Timur Turlov. All three are businessmen. None of them is a career chess administrator in the traditional sense — the kind of person who has sat on FIDE commissions for twenty years and knows the world championship regulations down to the comma.

Rosenstein is the name getting the most attention, for a very specific reason: he has pledged to bring Magnus Carlsen back into the classical world championship cycle.

I read the report dated 18 September three times. On the third pass, I stopped at exactly one point and asked myself: where is the mechanism?

No mechanism was stated.

I entered the chess world in 2026 as a player and tournament organiser, then moved into media. Across more than four decades of watching this industry — from late nights commentating chess on VTC to the podcasts I host now — I learned something no classroom teaches: real power in elite chess does not sit on the board. It sits in the meeting room, where people decide who gets to play, in which format, and who collects the broadcast rights.

In 2026, at a press conference in Delhi, I was the only woman in the room. The question I asked did not sound like a woman's question. The answer they gave did not sound like a man's answer: evasion. Nine years later, I am still sitting in the corner of the room. Only the question has moved — nobody asks about the position anymore. They ask about the money.

The key point is this: the vote on 26 September 2026 is not a contest of ideas about chess. It is a negotiation over control of the calendar, the broadcast rights, and the standing of the classical title in an entertainment market that has completely changed.

A forced transition

Arkady Dvorkovich is leaving the chair. Not because he lost a vote, but because he was placed on the European Union sanctions list. That kind of exit creates a very particular risk: when the departing leader is not removed by internal decision, the incoming one is not chosen cleanly by internal decision either.

The transition is happening fast, under geopolitical pressure. Three candidates emerged.

Wadim Rosenstein — a German businessman, promoter and organiser of elite chess events, founder and chairman of WR Chess. Jan Henric Buettner — also a German businessman, tied to the commercial chess ecosystem. Timur Turlov — a Kazakh businessman, arriving on the ballot with financial resources.

The vote is on 26 September 2026, during the FIDE General Assembly in Samarkand. The gap between the report's publication and the vote is only days. To me, that is a compressed scrutiny window — and the narrower the window, the more the advantage tilts toward whoever has money, a media machine, and pre-built relationships.

Two big files decide this election. First, the structure of the world championship cycle — the confrontation between the classical format and the alternative formats. Second, the question of Russian and Belarusian participation, a legal file that is still open.

My readers in India often ask why they should care about a meeting in Uzbekistan. The answer lies here: FIDE controls the pathway to the title. Whoever controls the pathway controls the commercial value of an entire generation of players — including the fast-rising Indian and Uzbek generations.

Capital has walked into the meeting room

Historically, FIDE presidential elections have been contests between institutional officials — people who climbed from one commission to the next. This time is very different. All three candidates come from the private sector, and at least two of them own assets inside the very industry they want to lead.

That is a structural signal. When private capital realises that chess's margin lies in control of the calendar and the rights, its arrival in the meeting room is a consequence, not an accident.

The competition here is no longer between chess platforms. It is between sources of financial resources at the institutional level.

I once sat in the organising row of youth tournaments in the early 2000s. Back then, people fought over a federation's academic prestige. Now they fight over the right to allocate events, sign broadcast deals, and shape formats. Same building, different price list.

The Russia file and the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling

In June, FIDE temporarily suspended the Russian Chess Federation. The reason: the federation failed to comply, within the prescribed deadline, with a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling concerning the incorporation of organisations from occupied Ukrainian territories.

Rosenstein has committed to following the CAS decision, with phrasing that leaves almost no discretionary room: there is no way around it.

This is the least controversial plank of his platform. It is framed legally, tied to an external arbitration body, and therefore does not depend on the personal goodwill of whoever wins. In governance terms, that makes it a verifiable commitment — a rarity in a campaign where most of the rest is assertion.

But this file will not disappear after 26 September. CAS compliance is an externally imposed obligation, not a voluntary choice. That means: whoever wins, the Russia and Belarus question will return — perhaps within months, perhaps before the next congress.

I have watched a legal file that appeared closed reopen two years later because of one late filing. Chess cannot escape being an administrative sport. And once a file is in CAS hands, it runs on legal logic, not chess logic.

Conflict of interest: the candidate's own double-edged sword

This is where I want to slow down, because everything above is only context.

Rosenstein has faced campaign questions about his business links to Russia. His WR Group Holding previously had logistics, certification, and oil-and-gas projects in Russia; those projects are said to have been dropped after the 2026 sanctions.

He has also proposed an internal rule: FIDE employees should not be permitted to work simultaneously for private chess organisations.

On its face, that is strong. In principle, it is a conflict-of-interest measure pointed in the right direction, and I acknowledge that. But one question remains unresolved: as founder and chairman of WR Chess — an organiser of elite chess events — how would that rule apply to his own ecosystem?

A conflict-of-interest rule only has value if the person proposing it applies it to himself first. Otherwise it becomes a media-risk control measure rather than a governance commitment.

I have no evidence of wrongdoing. I only have a question that anyone who has sat in a regulations meeting must ask: the FIDE presidency controls championship-cycle rules and commercial rights. If the person holding that office also owns a tournament-organising entity, conflict of interest stops being an ethical question. It becomes an economic one.

Here I want to correct myself on one thing. For years, I wrote too fast and too harshly about sports officials, sometimes losing readers' goodwill in the process. I have to admit: a businessman with assets in the industry stepping into a leadership role is not automatically a bad thing. Sometimes it is precisely the condition for reform — because only someone who understands money flows can fix money flows. The problem is not that he owns assets. The problem is that no public disclosure and clear self-recusal mechanism yet exists.

The Carlsen pledge: highest heat, lowest verifiability

Magnus Carlsen is a five-time classical world champion, world No. 1 with a classical rating of roughly 2830 (that figure needs verification), with a published peak of about 2882 in 2026. In 2026, he announced he would not defend the title in 2026, and has since shifted focus to other formats.

Hikaru Nakamura is world No. 2, with a classical rating of roughly 2790–2800 (also needs verification), and a peak of about 2816 in 2026.

Rosenstein has claimed that, among the candidates, he has the best relations with Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura.

This is campaign positioning. It is not a verifiable data point. There is no meeting record, no written commitment, no clause. I read that sentence with the eyes of someone who has gone back to rewatch footage at two in the morning to check a detail she got wrong — and I know the difference between a good relationship and an agreement.

That difference is the whole issue.

FIDE cannot order a player to enter the championship cycle. FIDE can only adjust qualification pathways, wild cards, and commercial incentives. If the pledge to bring Carlsen back does not come with one of those three, it is a slogan, not a plan.

And here is the point the candidates avoid: the format Carlsen genuinely cares about most is the freestyle variant, also known as Chess960 — randomised starting positions that sharply reduce the value of memorised opening preparation and shift the skill axis toward raw calculation and adaptability.

In other words, the format most attractive to Carlsen is precisely the one that erodes the advantage of players who have invested most heavily in classical opening databases. That is a paradox nobody in the meeting room wants to say out loud.

Format fragmentation and a title pushed to the margins

We are living through a period in which fast formats — freestyle, rapid, blitz, online — attract far more attention than classical chess. Classical chess has long time controls, deep preparation, high draw rates, and a slow media cycle. The new formats are shorter, higher-variance, and carry stronger commercial streaming dynamics.

This is where I think most analysis has the wrong focus.

The position that the classical crown should remain central is not a technical position. It is a prestige position. FIDE is not claiming classical chess is more competitive. FIDE is only claiming the classical title is the most prestigious. Those are different claims, and the blurring between them is where format debates become meaningless.

The formats are winning on attention while the classical title wins on symbolism — and the two are separating in a way no governing body can patch with a resolution.

I once worked through an empty arena during the pandemic shutdown, when every tournament stopped at once. That was when I discovered the reason chess without spectators is dull is not the players. It is that people were turning players into robots. Once you strip away the noise, the crowd, and the emotion, classical chess becomes a technical examination — precise, beautiful, and unsellable.

This explains why the 26 September election matters so much: the winner will shape the structure of the next championship cycle. Not by choosing who becomes champion, but by deciding what counts as a championship.

The sponsorship gap: chess's biggest commercial paradox

Rosenstein himself said the thing few dare to say: chess has only a few real sponsors.

I cross-checked that claim against my professional memory. A sport present in nearly every country on earth, with hundreds of millions of players, with content easier to produce than almost any other sport, and with natural streaming capability — yet its global sponsor base is far thinner than sports with comparable recognition.

This is chess's clearest commercial gap, and it predates every FIDE presidency.

Chess has top-tier global awareness but a thin sponsorship base — which is why the commercialisation platform, not the format platform, is the most credible part of this campaign.

For a podcaster like me, this is the kind of paradox worth hours of airtime. But for a federation that has to pay staff, run events, and retain players, it is a survival issue. A president who only talks about titles and never about revenue will not hold the chair for more than one term.

The coordinates of the two most valuable players

Carlsen and Nakamura are the two most commercially valuable active players. Their participation choices shape the championship cycle's value more than any institutional reform.

There is an asymmetry of power here I want to state plainly: bargaining power runs in favour of the players, not the federation. FIDE needs Carlsen more than Carlsen needs FIDE, because the classical title's commercial value falls sharply without its most recognisable figure.

Nakamura, as framed in this campaign, is positioned more as a media asset — a streamer-player ranked world No. 2 — than as a classical title contender.

I need to make this clear so readers do not misread it: these are two different roles, and distinguishing competitive strength from traffic value is mandatory for serious analysis. Nakamura is still world No. 2. He does not need anyone to redefine his value. But using his traffic as evidence of classical strength means mixing two different scoreboards.

Both players are repositioning toward format diversification and commercial value, not toward defending the classical title. That is the single most important fact in this whole story, and it appears in no campaign platform.

The contrarian angle: the winner matters less than what the winner cannot control

Now to the part where I want to argue with the crowd currently looking toward Samarkand.

Public discussion is betting on the question of who wins. I think that is the wrong question.

The winner on 26 September will control: qualification rules, the calendar, the rights structure, and internal ethics rules. That person will not control: whether a 35-year-old player wants to return to a cycle lasting many months, or whether audiences come back to classical chess.

If I say this and I am wrong, my error is specific and easily checkable: Carlsen returns because of a format concession, and the classical title regains commercial traction within twelve months.

But if I am right, we will see one of two scenarios. One: the new president pushes clean conflict-of-interest reform, handles the Russia file strictly according to CAS precedent, then discovers that the format structure keeps shifting toward commercial platforms — and the presidency becomes a nominal crisis-management chair. Two: the new president tries to hold the classical title's central position with administrative measures and pushes himself into confrontation with the very players he needs to sustain its appeal.

In both scenarios, the winner is not the one controlling the outcome. Those who control the outcome are the ones holding the formats — and right now, that means the platforms, the private organisers, and the players themselves.

This is also why I read the proposed rule banning FIDE staff from simultaneous private-sector work with caution. It is morally right. But if enforced seriously, it will reduce the overlap between the FIDE apparatus and tournament organisers — meaning it slows the informal coordination that currently keeps the chess calendar running smoothly. Good reform sometimes costs efficiency. That price is worth paying, but it should be stated.

What I will be tracking, and a pledge that can be tested

I do not have a vote in Samarkand. I only have a microphone and a professional habit: turn promises into checkpoints.

Checkpoint one: the vote result on 26 September 2026, and which platform items actually become written documents afterwards. Not speeches. Documents.

Checkpoint two: any statement from Magnus Carlsen or Hikaru Nakamura about the championship cycle. A clear commitment or a clear refusal — both are worth more than speculation.

Checkpoint three: CAS compliance developments concerning the Russian Chess Federation, and any conflict-of-interest disclosure from the new leadership.

To me, a prediction only has value when it can be proven wrong. So I will state mine plainly: within twelve months of 26 September 2026, there will be no Carlsen return to the classical cycle without either a format concession or a publicly announced special qualification path.

[This story is not over. What happens in Samarkand will not decide who is best. It will decide who gets to define what best means for the next twenty years.]

Source note: this article is based on a Reuters report published on 18 September 2026 about the FIDE presidential vote in Samarkand; some player rating figures are approximate and require verification. The analysis is a personal view, not investment or betting advice.