FIDE Chess Olympiad 2026: Yehuda Gruenfeld and Team Israel Among the Top Favorites

The 2026 FIDE Chess Olympiad for Players with Disabilities will take place from September 10 to 17 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. For the first time, the event will be held concurrently with the main Chess Olympiad. A record 40 teams will compete over the board.

Team Israel enters the tournament as the third seed by average rating, behind only Poland, with an average rating of 2215, and Cuba, with 2200. The key player and leader of the Israeli squad is 70-year-old grandmaster Yehuda Gruenfeld. With a rating of 2379, he is the highest-rated player in the field.

Gruenfeld comes into the tournament in excellent form. In May 2026, in Spain, he won gold medals in both rapid and blitz at the World Chess Championships for the Deaf. According to FIDE, these results earned him a place at the 2027 Deaflympics. At the previous Olympiad in Astana, he also won gold on the first board.

International masters Eyal Deutsch and Andrey Gurbanov join the experienced grandmaster in representing Israel. The tournament consists of seven rounds played under the Swiss system. Each team consists of four players and one reserve, and the regulations require every team to field at least one male and one female player in each round.

The Samarkand event will be the third over-the-board FIDE competition for players with visual, hearing, and physical disabilities. In 2023, in Belgrade, the Israeli team finished eighth despite being the second seed. In 2025, in Astana, the team improved on that result, winning bronze medals.