The tournament was played as an 11-round
Swiss-system tournament.
Tie-breaks For players who finished on the same score, final position was determined by the following tie-breaks, in order: •
Buchholz Cut 1 method — "the sum of the scores of each of the opponents of a player" but "reduced by the lowest score of the opponents"; • Buchholz method — "the sum of the scores of each of the opponents of a player"; •
Sonneborn–Berger score — "the sum of the scores of the opponents a player has defeated (including wins by forfeit) and half the scores of the players with whom he has drawn"; • The results of individual games between tied players; • Drawing of lots. This was a change from the
2019 tournament, in which the average opponent
rating (excluding the lowest rated opponent) was used as the first tie-break.
Venue and schedule The tournament was originally scheduled to run from 27 October to 7 November 2021 on the
Isle of Man. However, due to complications arising from the
COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, FIDE announced it would change the venue. Their stated concerns were that too many attendees would have to self-isolate under COVID-19 travel quarantine rules in the United Kingdom. On 9 August FIDE announced
Riga, capital of
Latvia, as the new venue. Due to a rise in COVID-19 cases, Latvia went into a
lockdown beginning on 21 October, but FIDE announced that the Grand Swiss tournaments were exempt from this lockdown, and would proceed as scheduled. The 11 rounds were played from 27 October to 7 November, with a rest day on 2 November. 25 October was scheduled as the "Arrivals" day, with the opening ceremony on 26 October and the closing ceremony on 8 November. Games started at 2pm local time. This corresponded to 11:00
UTC from 27 to 30 October, and 12:00 UTC from 31 October onwards. ==Qualifiers==