The torch relay began in India, which hosted the previous Chess Olympiad, and passed through eleven countries: Canada, Colombia, France, Georgia, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Morocco, New Zealand, Romania, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Hungarian grandmaster
Judit Polgár marched with the torch on the streets of Budapest before entering the venue where she lit the cauldron.
Opening ceremony The opening ceremony took place on 10 September at 18:00 CEST (UTC+2:00) at the Dr. Jeno Koltai Sports Center. Only participants in the Olympiad and members of the press were allowed to attend the ceremony. Deputy State Secretary for Sport of the State Secretariat for Sports at the Ministry of Defence of Hungary Gábor Schmidt, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich and President of the Hungarian Chess Federation Zoltán Polyánszky spoke during the ceremony. Dvorkovich officially declared the 45th Chess Olympiad as open. The highlight of the ceremony was the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. A video documenting the route of the torch relay around the world was played. In the final seconds of the video, Judit Polgár appeared marching through the streets of Budapest holding the torch while dressed in red. The video ended with Polgár entering the venue of the opening ceremony to greet the audience and light the Olympic cauldron. Shortly afterwards, Judit's sisters
Susan and
Sofia joined the stage to draw lots for the colour of pieces for the top teams. They were directed by Chief Arbiter Ivan Syrovy to the gigantic
Rubik's Cubes containing two smaller cubes, of which they had to choose one. It was determined that the top teams in both events would start their games in the first round with the black pieces. The ceremony featured performances from French pianist and composer
Jason Kouchak and Hungarian singer
Lilla Vincze. Together they composed a song titled "Royal Game", which premiered during the opening ceremony. Rose May & Raul also performed "Trojan War", the official song of the Olympiad. The ceremony ended with a video tribute to all participating countries, which featured their names and flags shown one after another with songs performed by Kouchak and Vincze in the background. Hungary, as host country, was permitted to field three teams in each of the two sections. The Women's tournament featured a record-number of 183 teams from 181 federations.
Saint Kitts and Nevis was the only national federation to field a team in the Women's event but not in the Open event. A team representing the
Netherlands Antilles was permitted to compete, despite having
dissolved itself in 2010, because the Curaçao Chess Federation remains officially registered as representing the dissolved country in the FIDE Directory.
Gender equality FIDE initiated programmes with the goal of ensuring equal opportunities for women in chess. In this regard, the FIDE Commission for Women's Chess launched a special project called "National Female Team Initiative", which would enable more countries to send women's teams to the Chess Olympiad. The project provided support for the preparation of women's teams from nine countries and territories—Liechtenstein,
Guernsey, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, the
United States Virgin Islands, Saint Lucia, Nauru, and the
Cayman Islands—who made their debut in the Women's section. The debuting teams received financial support, expert coaching as well as substantial mental and material support for the training sessions conducted in July and August 2024. In addition, the FIDE Commission for Women's Chess started a pilot project called "ChessMom" aimed at supporting female players with children under the age of one who were unable to participate at Chess Olympiads in the past due to difficulties in finding childcare during the tournament. The commission appointed a care-giver for each child, and these people were official members of the national delegations. Some of the players who were involved in this project included
Alina Kashlinskaya,
Nana Dzagnidze,
Yuliia Osmak, Aster Melake Bantiwalu, Rauha Shipindo and Nolwazi Nkwanyane.
Refugee Team Teams of refugees participated for the first time at the Chess Olympiads. A selection process consisting of tournaments organised by FIDE at schools and community centres in
Kakuma, Kenya, was conducted in order to find ten promising players—five for the team in the Open and five for the team in the Women's event—that would represent the refugees at the Budapest Chess Olympiad. The participants at the tournaments were from community chess clubs, primary and secondary schools, and the Girls Club. The effort was part of FIDE's initiative for refugees "Chess for Protection", which was launched in 2021 and jointly executed with
UNHCR,
Lutheran World Federation, Chess Kenya, and the Kakuma Chess Club. ;Notes : Countries in
italics denote those fielding teams in the Open event only. : Countries in
bold denote those fielding teams in the Women's event only. : FIDE officially recognises
the flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Competition format and calendar The tournament was played in a
Swiss system format. The
time control for all games was 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, after which an additional 30 minutes were granted; an increment of 30 seconds per move was applied from the first move. Players were permitted to
offer a draw at any time. A total of 11 rounds were played, and all teams had to be paired in every round. In each round, four players from each team faced four players from another team; teams were permitted one reserve player who could be substituted between rounds. The four games were played simultaneously on four boards with alternating colours,
scoring 1 game point for a win and ½ game point for a draw. The scores from each game were summed together to determine which team would win the round. Winning a round was worth two match points, regardless of the game point margin, while drawing a round was worth one match point. Teams were ranked in a table based on match points.
Tie-breakers for the table were i) the
Sonneborn–Berger system; ii) total game points scored; iii) the sum of the match points of the opponents, excluding the lowest one. Tournament rounds started on 11 September and ended with the final round on 22 September. All rounds began at 15:00 CEST (UTC+2:00), except for the final round which began at 11:00 CEST (UTC+2:00). There was one rest day on 17 September, after the sixth round. :
All times are CEST (UTC+2:00) Open event The Open event was contested by a total of 975 players from 197 teams. It featured seven of the top ten players from the
FIDE rating list published in September 2024. World number two
Hikaru Nakamura decided not to play for a second Olympiad in a row, and
Alireza Firouzja did not play for France. India, whose second team had won bronze at the
previous Olympiad, which the country had hosted, had the second highest rating of 2753 with three players from the bronze-winning team. The squad consisted of the challenger in the
World Chess Championship 2024 Gukesh Dommaraju on board one followed by
R Praggnanandhaa,
Arjun Erigaisi,
Vidit Gujrathi and
Pentala Harikrishna. Former five-time World Champion
Vishwanathan Anand decided to step aside for the younger generation and was the only one of India's top-rated players who did not play. China had the third highest average rating of 2727 with reigning World Champion
Ding Liren playing on top board, followed by
Wei Yi,
Yu Yangyi,
Bu Xiangzhi and
Wang Yue. Former five-time World Champion and current world number one
Magnus Carlsen played on top board for the sixth-seeded team of Norway. Other strong contenders included Poland, the Netherlands and England (strengthened by
Nikita Vitiugov). They were the only unbeaten team in the tournament, having scored ten wins and one draw, and scored four match points more than the rest of the field. It was India's first overall win at the Chess Olympiads. On the road to the gold medal, they defeated the United States, Hungary and China, and were held to a draw only by Uzbekistan in the ninth round. A group of five teams finished with 17 match points (eight wins, one draw and two losses), but the pre-tournament first-seeded team of the United States and defending champions Uzbekistan achieved better tie-breakers and won the silver and bronze medals, respectively. Despite the lacklustre performance from World Champion Ding Liren, who did not win a single game in the tournament, the Chinese team was in the race for the gold until the final round and ended in fourth place due to their last-round loss to the US team. Serbia came fifth and Armenia sixth after scoring 17 match points as well. Slovenia's strong performance with 16 match points (eight wins and three losses) earned them the ninth place. The challenger in the World Chess Championship 2024, Gukesh Dommaraju of India, achieved the highest rating performance of 3056 in the Open event after scoring 9 out of 10 points (eight wins and two draws) on board one. Erigaisi's performance earned him the third place on the FIDE rankings. Magnus Carlsen won the bronze medal on board one, leaving his ambition of eliminating one of the few gaps in his career unfulfilled. ;Notes • Average ratings calculated by chess-results.com based on September 2024 FIDE ratings. • The
Sonneborn–Berger score is a tie-breaking criterion used to rank teams with equal match points. All board medals were given out according to
performance ratings for players who played at least eight games at the tournament.
Women's event The Women's event was contested by a total of 909 players from 183 teams. It featured only
Nana Dzagnidze from the top ten players according to the FIDE rating list published in September 2024. The silver medallists from the previous Olympiad Georgia were the second seeds with an average rating of 2462. The squad consisted of Nana Dzagnidze,
Lela Javakhishvili,
Nino Batsiashvili,
Bella Khotenashvili and
Salome Melia. Despite the fact that China was missing all four top players—
Hou Yifan,
Ju Wenjun,
Tan Zhongyi and
Lei Tingjie—the young team was still competitive and were seeded in fourth place with an average rating of 2416.
Women's summary of China won an individual gold medal on board one in the Women's event. India justified their role as pre-tournament top seeds according to the average rating and won the gold medal in the Women's event with a total of 19 match points, having recorded nine wins, one draw and one loss. It was India's first overall win at the Chess Olympiads. Kazakhstan had a strong performance that earned them the silver medal with 18 match points (eight wins, two draws and one loss), and the United States completed the podium with 17 match points (eight wins, one draw and two losses). However, they lost the lead due to the two ties with Georgia and the United States in the final rounds. The US team had the best tie-breaker amongst the four teams tied for third place, ahead of Spain, Armenia and Georgia, which got them the bronze medal. Without their top players, China finished in seventh place and defending champions Ukraine came eighth. On the other boards, individual gold medals were also won by
Zhu Jiner of China with 7 out of 9 and a rating performance of 2597,
Carissa Yip of the United States who had the highest individual score in the tournament of 10 out of 11 with a rating performance of 2634, Divya Deshmukh who scored 9½ out of 11 with a rating performance of 2608, and Vantika Agrawal of India with 7½ out of 9 and a rating performance of 2558. ;Notes • Average ratings calculated by chess-results.com based on September 2024 FIDE ratings. • The Sonneborn–Berger score is a tie-breaking criterion used to rank teams with equal match points. All board medals were given out according to performance ratings for players who played at least eight games at the tournament.
Gaprindashvili Trophy The
Nona Gaprindashvili Trophy, created by FIDE in 1997 and named after former Women's World Champion
Nona Gaprindashvili, is given to the teams with the best combined performance in the Open and Women's tournaments (sum of their positions in both standings). India won the Trophy ahead of the United States in second place and Armenia in third place. == FIDE Congress ==