Organizers of the FIDE World University Team Chess Championship-2026, which will be held from August 4 to 9 in Almaty, have announced the group compositions for the first-ever team chess Universiade. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
Among the participants are three teams from Kazakhstan. The teams of the Kazakh National University (KazNU) and the Kazakh National University of Sports (KNUS) will play in Group D, alongside representatives of Indonesia's Gunadarma University and the UK's Oxford University.
The third Kazakh team – Almaty Management University (Alma-U) – will compete for a quarterfinal spot in Group C, with students from Cambridge (UK), American Dallas, and Greek Athens.
Group A includes teams from Ural State Mining University (UGGU) from Russia, as well as teams from Australia's Melbourne, America's Harvard, and China's Peking universities.
Group B consists of student teams from the University of Pretoria (South Africa), Webster and Saint Louis universities (USA), and the University of Chile.
The round-robin matches will determine the top two teams from each group. Then the playoffs follow – quarterfinals, semifinals, a third-place match, and the final.
Games will be played on four boards. Each team must have at least one male and at least one female player. Time control is 45 minutes plus 30 seconds per move starting from the first move.
Among the tournament participants are international grandmasters Dimitris Alexakis (Greece), Chopra Aryan, Subramanyam Bharam, Chatterjee Kustav, Aditya Samant (all from India), Viktor Gazik (Slovakia), Nikoloz Kacharava (Georgia), Sergey Lobanov, Rudik Makaryan, Arseniy Nesterov (all from Russia), Yair Parkhov (Israel), Francesco Sonis (Italy), and Kazybek Nogerbek (Kazakhstan).
The honor of their alma maters will be defended by international masters Meruert Kamalidenova, Satbek Akhmedinov, Arystan Isanzhulov, FIDE masters Zhangir Bizhigitov, Yerlan Tleukhanov, Nurasyl Zhumabek, and other Kazakh players.
The opening ceremony of the first team chess world championship among universities will take place on August 4. The first group matches will also be held that day.
The tournament is organized by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) together with the Ministry of Tourism and Sports of Kazakhstan, the Kazakhstan Chess Federation (KCF), the Almaty city akimat, and Freedom Holding Corp.
The total prize fund is €50,000. Champions will receive €25,000, vice-champions – €15,000, and the third-place team will split €10,000.