The Esports Nations Cup 2026 is giving Chess one of its biggest esports stages yet, with a full 128-player lineup locked in through rankings, regional qualifiers, and wildcard invites.
We now know the schedule of the Chess tournament, and it’ll run from Nov. 2 to 8, 2026, as part of a broader 16-title Nations Cup program.
Chess at ENC 2026 is built around a clear numbers game. A total of 64 players will earn direct invitations through the official Champions Chess Tour (CCT) rankings. However, there is one important catch, which is that only one player per nation can qualify this way.
If the rankings do not produce 64 unique countries, the organizers will use the Titled Tuesday Spring Split as an additional tiebreak to fill out the list. The cut-off date for these direct invites is May 26, 2026.
The remaining 64 spots will come from a mix of regional qualifiers and wildcards. 56 players will qualify through online events, while eight players will be added through wildcard slots. Chess.com will operate the qualifiers, which are split into seven major regions, each sending eight players to Riyadh.
Those regions are North America, South America, Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, Central Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Each region will run two qualifiers, held on June 6 to 7 and June 13 to 14, and each qualifier will advance four players.
Every qualifier features two stages: a Swiss stage to narrow the field and a double elimination bracket to decide who grabs the tickets to ENC 2026. With this setup, every region ends up with eight representatives, and every path is clearly laid out for titled players and rising talents chasing a spot.
There is also a hard cap on how many players each nation can send. At most, a country can have two representatives in the ENC 2026 Chess event. If a nation already has a player in through the CCT rankings, only one more player from that country can come through the qualifiers. Nations without a direct invite are still allowed to qualify two players online.
Once everyone is in Riyadh, those 128 players will be split into 16 groups of eight for a round robin group stage, with the top four from each group advancing. That leads into a 64-player single-elimination playoff bracket. All games will be played in Rapid 10+0, with best-of-two matches in the group stage, Round of 64, and Round of 32, before moving to best-of-four from the quarterfinals onward. If any match is tied, an Armageddon game will decide who moves on.
It is a big step up from Chess’s first appearance at the Esports World Cup in 2025, where Magnus Carlsen lifted the trophy for Team Liquid and 20 nations were represented across the main event and Last Chance Qualifier.
