The Grand Chess Tour is returning to Zagreb for another stop at the Westin Hotel, and this time the field is stacked differently from previous years. The 2026 Super Rapid and Blitz Croatia runs from June 29 to July 6, 2026, and it brings together 10 grandmasters for what is the third stop of the 2026 Grand Chess Tour season.
Zagreb has hosted this event multiple times now, and the venue and format are well-established.
Let’s know more about the tournament.
Where Is Super Rapid and Blitz Croatia Being Held?
The tournament is held at The Westin Zagreb, a hotel located in the centre of the city. It has been the regular home of the Zagreb leg of the Grand Chess Tour for several years now, and players and organisers are familiar with it.
Format
This is a combined rapid and blitz event. It is not two separate tournaments, so everything counts towards one final scoreboard.
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Rapid Phase: All 10 players play each other once in a single round robin. That gives 9 rounds of rapid chess per player. The time control is 25 minutes per player, with a 10-second increment per move.
Blitz Phase: After the rapid is done, the blitz begins. Players go through two full round robins, meaning they face every opponent twice, once with white and once with black. The time control for blitz is 5 minutes per player, with a 2-second increment per move.
The two phases combine into one final standings table. However, rapid and blitz points are not equal:
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- A rapid win = 2 points
- A rapid draw = 1 point
- A rapid loss = 0 points
- A blitz win = 1 point
- A blitz draw = 0.5 points
- A blitz loss = 0 points
So the maximum any player can score in rapid is 18 points, and the maximum in blitz is 18 points. A player who dominates the rapid but plays average blitz can still win the overall event.
In the 2025 edition of this event, Magnus Carlsen won with 22.5 combined points out of a possible 36.
Prize Money
The total prize fund for this event is $200,000 USD. A full breakdown by finishing position has not been published by the Grand Chess Tour yet.
The 2026 prize structure is likely to follow a similar distribution to that of 2025, though the official breakdown is pending.
Player List
The 2026 Croatia stop has six full-tour players and four wildcards. That is one more wildcard than the originally announced, because the lineup changed in the weeks between announcement and the start of the season.
Here is the confirmed player list for Zagreb:
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Full-Tour Players
| Player | Country |
| GM Vincent Keymer | Germany |
| GM Alireza Firouzja | France |
| GM Anish Giri | Netherlands |
| GM Levon Aronian | USA |
| GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | France |
| GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu | India |
Wildcard Players
| Player | Country |
| GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov | Uzbekistan |
| GM Gukesh Dommaraju | India |
| GM Ivan Šaric | Croatia |
| GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac | Romania |
And notably, reigning World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, who stepped back from the full GCT tour, will still appear in Zagreb as a wildcard player. That makes the field even stronger than it looks on paper.
2026 Grand Chess Tour: Full Season Schedule
Here is the full schedule of the 2026 Grand Chess Tour-
| Stop | Event | Dates | Location |
| 1 | Super Rapid & Blitz Poland | May 3-10 | Warsaw, Poland |
| 2 | Super Chess Classic Romania | May 12-24 | Bucharest, Romania |
| 3 | Super Rapid & Blitz Croatia | June 29 – July 6 | Zagreb, Croatia |
| 4 | Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz | July 31 – Aug 7 | Saint Louis, USA |
| 5 | Sinquefield Cup | Aug 8 – 21 | Saint Louis, USA |
| 6 | GCT Finals | Aug 21 – 28 | Saint Louis, USA |
Results so far in 2026:
- Stop 1 (Poland): Hans Niemann won, but as a wildcard, his result doesn’t count towards the overall GCT standings. Fabiano Caruana led among full-tour players.
- Stop 2 (Romania): Vincent Keymer won the classical event.
How to Watch
Games will be broadcast live on the Saint Louis Chess Club YouTube and Twitch channels, with commentary from GM Yasser Seirawan, GM Cristian Chirila, and IM Nazi Paikidze.
The broadcast typically starts at the beginning of each playing session. Exact daily start times for the Zagreb event have not been published yet.
Also Read: FIDE World Team Rapid and Blitz Chess Championship 2026: Top Five Players To Watch
