11 rounds, a record 400 teams, and a finish that stayed live until the very last move of the very last round. Here are the Chess Olympiad 2026 final results: Uzbekistan got the ending their home crowd had been promised, sole leaders since Round 9 and champions again by the time the boards were cleared on Sunday. China did what China does in the Women’s section, a 7th Olympiad gold that no other nation can match. And India, still in the frame for a double gold as late as Saturday night, leave Samarkand with a genuine trophy cabinet moment of their own. Silver in the Open, bronze in the Women’s section, and the Gaprindashvili Cup retained for the strongest combined showing across both events.
Chess Olympiad 2026 Final Results: Medal Table
Open section
- Gold: Uzbekistan (20 match points)
- Silver: India (18 match points, won tiebreak over Germany)
- Bronze: Germany (18 match points)
Women’s section
- Gold: China (20 match points)
- Silver: Kazakhstan (18 match points)
- Bronze: India (17 match points)
Every Individual Indian Medal Winner in Samarkand
Six individual medals for India across the 2 sections, a genuine haul once it’s added up in one place.
Open section
- Silver, board 4: Gukesh, despite the final-round loss to Gleb Dudin
- Bronze: Praggnanandhaa
Arjun Erigaisi’s dominant final round, and Nihal Sarin’s steady tournament, did not translate into individual medals this time, medals are decided by performance across all 11 rounds, not by any single result.
Women’s section
- Gold, board 5: Savitha Shri B, unbeaten through the entire tournament
- Silver: Divya Deshmukh
- Bronze: Koneru Humpy
- Bronze: Vantika Agrawal
That is 4 of India’s 5 Women’s players walking away with an individual medal, and only Vaishali Rameshbabu, in and out of the lineup through the reserve rotation, without one. A reminder of just how deep this Women’s squad ran.
Open Section: Uzbekistan Crowned, India Take Silver
Uzbekistan’s coronation was not a formality. They needed a result against Ukraine and got exactly that, 2.5-1.5, with 3 of the 4 boards drawn and the match settled by a player few outside Uzbekistan would have named before this tournament. Reserve Mukhiddin Madaminov delivered the win on board 4 and finished the event unbeaten on 5.5 from 7, the kind of performance that turns a squad player into a household name overnight. Nodirbek Abdusattorov, pressing with an extra pawn in a bishop ending on board 1, let his own win slip in the final reckoning, not that it mattered. Four of the 5 players from Uzbekistan’s 2022 gold-medal side were on the board again here, closing a loop that started in Chennai.
India’s final match, a 2-2 draw with Hungary, read like a tournament in miniature, a different story on every board. Arjun Erigaisi supplied the only win, and it was the kind that settles arguments, a fitting way to answer for the win he let slip against Uzbekistan 2 in Round 10. Hungary’s Peter Leko drifted into difficulty as early as 18.d4?!, and Arjun did not let go, tightening the position over 40 patient moves until Leko’s nerve finally broke with 58.Rf2??. Arjun needed only a handful of moves after that to force resignation with a mating attack.
Elsewhere, the Open team played it safe and got away with it. Praggnanandhaa’s game with Richard Rapport drained itself into a king-and-bishop ending with no winner in it. Nihal Sarin matched that for calm against Benjamin Gledura, a level position filed down to a dead rook ending by move 31.
The one loss on India’s card belonged to the World Champion. Gukesh’s 18…Kf8?! against Gleb Dudin was the kind of single misjudgement that good opponents do not forgive, and Dudin did not forgive it. His advantage never fell below 2 pawns from that point, and he brought it home on move 59 without ever looking troubled. It cost Gukesh a share of the individual gold on board 4. It cost India nothing that mattered, the match, and the tournament, were already decided elsewhere.
India finished on 18 match points, dead level with Germany on both match points and game points. It was a head-to-head win over the Germans back in Round 9 that broke the tie in India’s favour, silver rather than bronze by the finest of margins. Germany had to settle for third, sealed by Matthias Bluebaum’s win over Jorden van Foreest in a 2.5-1.5 defeat of the Netherlands.
Women’s Section: China’s Record Gold, India’s Bronze
China needed no such theatre. A 3-1 win over Vietnam took them to 20 match points and a 7th Women’s Olympiad title, more than any country has ever won. Zhu Jiner closed out her tournament unbeaten on 7 from 9 with a win on board 1, and Lu Miaoyi added another for good measure. This was a coronation with the outcome never seriously in doubt.
Kazakhstan’s 2-2 draw with Poland was enough to secure silver on 18 match points. India took bronze on 17 after a final-round draw with Georgia that, like the Open match, had a genuine result on every board rather than a procession of safe draws.
Koneru Humpy produced the sharpest individual performance of India’s day. Nana Dzagnidze held level position until 18…Rfd8?? handed Humpy a completely winning game, and she did not need asking twice, closing it out with a mating attack that left Black facing checkmate in 2 and no reason to continue.
Divya Deshmukh’s afternoon went the other way. A level, unhurried game against Bella Khotenashvili turned on her own 26…Bxf2??, and a second slip, 27…Bd4?, handed White a clean route to victory. It happens, even to players carrying an individual silver medal into the final round, which Divya still did by the tournament’s end. Vantika Agrawal, by contrast, had the quietest day of the 4, a level draw with Lela Javakhishvili that never so much as flickered across 45 moves.
And then there was Savitha Shri B, whose final game did not just fit the day’s pattern of drama, it outdid it. That story gets told in full below.
FIDE Excellence Awards: A Trophy Off the Board Too
The medals were not the only recognition handed out in Samarkand. FIDE used the Olympiad to present its first-ever Excellence Awards, honouring achievements across the 2024 to 2026 cycle, on and off the board. India’s Open and Women’s teams were both among the recipients, alongside players like Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus and Levon Aronian.
Two individual awards went to players who had just walked off those same boards. Divya Deshmukh was named Best Female Player, an award that looked back at her whole cycle. There was the individual gold on board 3 in Budapest 2024, and the Women’s World Cup title in 2025 that made her a Grandmaster along the way. Javokhir Sindarov, fresh off Uzbekistan’s Open gold, was named Best Male Player. His own World Cup win in 2025 helped. So did a Candidates victory in April with a round still unplayed, the result that books his World Championship match against Gukesh in Geneva this winter.
ChessBase India picked up its own honour too, winning the inaugural Daniel Naroditsky Best Creator Award, chosen from 10 shortlisted creators out of hundreds of nominations. The All India Chess Federation had a podium finish of its own that night, coming third in the Best Federation category behind Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
There was one more trophy to go with the medals. India’s combined Open and Women’s results kept the Gaprindashvili Cup for a third straight edition, after Chennai in 2022 and Budapest in 2024. Five-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand handed it over himself.
It is a nice footnote to a tournament that gave Indian chess plenty to write about, and a reminder that the people covering the games were part of this Olympiad’s story as well.
Chess Bharat’s Highlight of the Tournament: Savitha’s 83-Move Marathon
Savitha’s final-round draw with Meri Arabidze was such an excellent game. It ran 83 moves, and the advantage changed hands more times than either player would care to count.
(Savitha playing with Black pieces against Arabidze)
Savitha’s 34…Qg5?? gifted White a near-winning position, and it looked, briefly, like the story might end there. Arabidze let most of it slip with 37.Qd3?!, and what followed was not a recovery so much as a shared loss of nerve on both sides, 41.Re5?? answered immediately by 41…c6??, then 44…Rc7??, then 49.Re5?? and 49…Qf7?, then 50.Bxh5??. Neither player could hold what the other had just handed them.
Out of that chaos came something almost serene, a rook ending that refused to break for either side. Checks and near-repetitions stretched the game out to move 83 before both players accepted what the position had been telling them for 20 moves, that there was no win left in it.
Savitha closes her first Olympiad on 9 points from 10 games, 8 wins and 2 draws, unbeaten from her opening move to her last. Medal or no medal, that is one of the finest individual campaigns any Indian player produced in Samarkand, and there is no better note to end our coverage on.
In the end, Uzbekistan got the party their home crowd had waited 4 years for, and China simply carried on doing what they do best. India left Samarkand with 2 medals rather than the double gold they chased into the final round. A team that stays in contention for the top of the podium in both sections until the last day has little to apologise for.
This is our last recap from Samarkand, and the final word on the Chess Olympiad 2026 final results. Thank you for following the tournament with us, round by round.
Note: We cover tournaments independently and check the available official results before publishing. If you spot something that doesn’t look right or needs clarification, let us know and we’ll take a look.
