Chess got its own version of the IPL in 2023, and it has only grown bigger since. The Global Chess League puts 6 franchise teams up against each other, mixes men, women, and junior players on the same roster, and hands out a $1 million prize fund. Season 4 wrapped in Bengaluru with a final nobody could have scripted better. Magnus Carlsen came back after a season away, Gukesh’s actual World Championship challenger Sindarov played in the same league, and the title came down to a Carlsen versus Nepomniachtchi rematch, always an iconic clash to watch!
What Is the Global Chess League?
The Global Chess League, known by its sponsor name as the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League, is a franchise-based team competition run jointly by Tech Mahindra and FIDE. It began in Dubai in 2023 and calls itself the world’s first and largest official franchise league in chess.
Each franchise fields 6 players in a fixed board order. The strongest player, called the Icon, plays on board 1. Boards 2 and 3 are reserved for men, boards 4 and 5 for women, and board 6 for a junior player. All 6 boards from both teams play at the same time, so a team’s result depends on the combined score across every board, not on one player alone.
6 teams play a double round-robin in the league stage, 10 matches each. The top 2 then meet in a final, decided over two matches. This basic shape has stayed the same since Season 1, though the scoring rules change a little every year, worth knowing since it affects how close a match can really be.
Every Global Chess League Season So Far
Season 1: Dubai, 2023
The league launched in Dubai from 21 June to 2 July 2023, drawing world no.1 Magnus Carlsen, Vishy Anand, Ding Liren, and Hou Yifan into 6 franchise squads. Triveni Continental Kings met UpGrad Mumba Masters in the final, and it came down to a genuine nail-biter. 2 rapid games were drawn, 2 blitz games were drawn, and the title was finally settled in sudden-death blitz, where Denmark’s Jonas Buhl Bjerre beat Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov in the fourth tie-break game. Bjerre was named Finals MVP, and R Praggnanandhaa took the Season MVP award.
Season 2: London, 2024
The league moved to London for its second edition, running from 3 to 14 October 2024. Triveni Continental Kings, now led by Alireza Firouzja, defended their title by beating Anish Giri’s PBG Alaskan Knights in the final. Alexandra Kosteniuk won both her games in the final and was named Player of the Final. Nihal Sarin took the Season MVP award.
Season 3: Mumbai, 2025
Season 3 ran in Mumbai from 14 to 23 December 2025, and this was the year the league’s prize fund crossed a genuine milestone, $1 million, split across team standings, individual game points, and a champion’s bonus. Triveni Continental Kings, under Firouzja, dominated the round-robin stage and finished 9 match points clear of the field. But the final resets everything to standard scoring, 1 point for a win and half a point for a draw, with no bonus for colour.
Alpine SG Pipers, led by Fabiano Caruana, took full advantage. They beat the Kings 4-2 and then 4.5-1.5 across the two final matches to win their first title. Anish Giri won both his games in the final and was named Player of the Final. PBG Alaskan Knights, led by Gukesh Dommaraju, took third place after coming back from 4 straight opening losses to beat Viswanathan Anand’s Ganges Grandmasters in a tiebreak.
Season 4: Bengaluru, 2026
Season 4 ran from 5 to 13 September 2026 at The Lalit Ashok, the league’s first time in Bengaluru. 6 franchises competed: FYERS American Gambits, CheQ Mumba Masters, Ganges Grandmasters, Triveni Continental Kings, PBG Alaskan Knights, and defending champions Alpine APL Pipers, now under their new sponsor name. The scoring changed again, a win with Black was worth 4 points, a win with White 3, and a draw 1, played at a 20-minute time control with a 2-second increment from move 41.
The round-robin stage stayed congested from the first day to the last. Both Alpine APL Pipers and Ganges Grandmasters lost their final round-robin match. Both reached the final anyway, on points banked earlier in the week. GM Irina Krush compared it to the 2013 Candidates, where both leaders also lost their last game before the decider, and Carlsen won that tournament anyway. History half-repeated itself. Ganges Grandmasters won the final and became the winner of the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League 2026. Ian Nepomniachtchi finally got past Carlsen on the Icon board, after their only earlier meeting this season ended in a draw. The other story of the season played out one board over. Vishy Anand endured his toughest individual run in years and closed the round-robin without a win, though teammate Arjun Erigaisi defended him in an interview by saying that: “At this age, I cannot imagine how many people would be playing at this level.”
The Storylines That Drove Season 4
This season carried some of the strongest storylines the league has had. Magnus Carlsen returned as an Icon after sitting out Season 3 entirely, playing for Alpine APL Pipers alongside Anish Giri, Vidit Gujrathi, and 2024 World Rapid Champion Volodar Murzin, with Divya Deshmukh making her long-awaited GCL debut on the same roster alongside Koneru Humpy.
Our own 5-times world champion, Vishy sir switched teams for the first time, leaving Ganges Grandmasters to lead a youth-heavy PBG Alaskan Knights lineup built around Arjun Erigaisi, 15-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, and Abhimanyu Mishra. FYERS American Gambits fielded Javokhir Sindarov, Gukesh’s actual challenger for the World Chess Championship this November, playing in India just over 2 months before that title match begins in Geneva.
3 of last season’s Icon players sat out this year altogether: reigning World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, and World No. 2-3 Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.
Speaking at this year’s opening ceremony, in a clip captured by ChessBase India, Anand Mahindra traced the league’s origin back to the 2020 Online Chess Olympiad, when he watched Samay Raina streaming chess alongside Magnus Carlsen and noticed the audience growing every 15 minutes. Mahindra has said Raina effectively dared him, in an online exchange, to build a real league out of it. He joked that comedians usually just make people laugh, but this one “provoked a global chess league.” FIDE’s then-president Arkady Dvorkovich reportedly saw the exchange himself and reached out directly, which is how Tech Mahindra and FIDE ended up as partners in the first place. Here’s Mahindra telling the full story in his own words, from this year’s opening ceremony:
From a Livestream Dare to a Real League
No other chess event brings men, women, and junior players onto the same team, scoring together, in a format built to be watched, not just followed on a results page. 4 seasons in, it has already produced a sudden-death blitz classic, a $1 million prize fund, and a genuine World Championship storyline playing out months before the real title match. Following the Global Chess League means watching where elite chess is headed next, as a sport people actually want to watch, not just play.
The Global Chess League isn’t the only event reshaping how the game gets watched. For the full picture of where it stacks up against the World Championship, the Chess Olympiad, and the rest of the calendar, our breakdown of the biggest chess events in the world lays out exactly how prize money and scale compare across all of them.
If a comedian’s late-night stream can talk a billionaire into building a real chess league, imagine what the next unlikely idea might turn into. Season 4 is done. If Nepomniachtchi’s comeback and Anand’s hardest season in years are any sign, Season 5 already has a lot to live up to.
Sources & Further Reading
- Wikipedia, “Global Chess League”
- Wikipedia, “Global Chess League 2023”
- Wikipedia, “Global Chess League 2024”
- Wikipedia, “Global Chess League 2025”
- FIDE, Alpine SG Pipers championship report
- ChessBase, Global Chess League 2026 preview
- ChessBase India, Season 4 opening ceremony report
- Chess.com, GCL 2026 Day 1 report
- Liquipedia, Global Chess League 2026
