NEW DELHI: India is about to host the FIDE Chess World Cup 2025 from October 31 to November 27, as confirmed by a senior official of the All India Chess Federation (AICF) in a dialog with TimesofIndia.com.
Although FIDE’s web site briefly listed India because the host venue on Monday, it reverted the standing to “To be introduced” inside hours. As of Wednesday, it continues to be in the identical, ambiguous state.
Nonetheless, the AICF official said with confidence that FIDE had unofficially confirmed India’s internet hosting rights as early as January or February 2024.
“India has extra potential. FIDE additionally acknowledges this. That’s the reason they belief us. Yeah, they place confidence in the Federation of India,” the senior official advised TimesofIndia.com.
The occasion marks a long-awaited return to this land, with India final internet hosting the FIDE World Cup in 2002 in Hyderabad, the place chess legend Viswanathan Anand bagged the title.
TimesofIndia.com understands the precise state or metropolis for internet hosting the World Cup is but to be determined and shall be finalised in an AICF assembly, attended by state secretaries, AICF officers, and different shareholders, throughout the subsequent month.
With the senior official additional clarifying that there received’t be a proper bidding course of, FIDE’s necessities, equivalent to venue inspections and logistical standards, shall be a deciding issue.
“The states prepared to conduct the World Cup will clarify their plans within the assembly. Whichever proposal appears higher and meets the necessities shall be thought-about. Whereas there will not be inside bidding, the assembly members will doubtless agree on probably the most appropriate location,” the official defined.
“Organising the World Cup isn’t as demanding as internet hosting an Olympiad, so two to a few months must be ample for preparations. The ultimate choice shall be made nicely upfront.”
The announcement caps off a rare interval for Indian chess. Gukesh Dommaraju’s gorgeous victory within the Candidates Event, adopted by his conquer China’s Ding Liren to grow to be the youngest-ever World Chess Champion in Singapore, has taken the chess world by storm.
Whereas Indian males’s and ladies’s sides each secured first-ever crew gold on the 2024 Chess Olympiad, rising stars like Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa and Arjun Erigaisi have additionally reached outstanding milestones.
Arjuna Awardee Vantika Agrawal ‘stunned’ on the transfer
FIDE’s choice to host the boys’s and ladies’s World Cups individually, scheduled to happen from July 5 to July 19 in Batumi, Georgia, has raised a couple of eyebrows, together with these of the newest Arjuna Award recipient, Vantika Agrawal.
In an unique interview with TimesofIndia.com, Vantika, who received two gold medals for India on the 2024 Chess Olympiad — one within the crew class and the opposite individually — shared her ideas on why it may have been ‘extra thrilling’ to carry each the boys’s and ladies’s World Cups in India.
“It’s going to be fairly huge for Indian chess. However I’m a bit stunned that the ladies’s World Cup and males’s World Cup are going to occur elsewhere. I’d actually want that these two occur collectively. Then it’s extra thrilling,” Vantika opined.
“However for Indian chess, it’s fairly huge. I do not keep in mind the final time a World Cup occurred in India. So, it’s fairly huge. We obtained World Juniors, and had the Chess Olympiad in Mahabalipuram in 2022. I hope many extra such occasions come to India in order that an increasing number of folks begin watching chess and get consciousness about it,” famous the 22-year-old Arjuna Awardee.
Addressing the choice to carry the boys’s and ladies’s World Cups individually, the senior official, nevertheless, clarified, “It’s not in our fingers. That is the area of FIDE; they regulate us. So, no matter they inform us, now we have to observe that.”
TimesofIndia.com also can affirm that the fifth leg of the FIDE Girls’s Grand Prix Sequence shall be hosted in Maharashtra, India from April 13 to 24 this yr.
