For two weeks every spring, Stavanger hosts what is — by audience size if not by category — the second-most-watched super-tournament of the chess year. The 14th edition of Norway Chess returns to the Finansparken with a sharper field than last year, no defending champion (Magnus Carlsen sat out 2025), and the format that has come to define the tournament: classical games where draws are settled in Armageddon.
Format and Armageddon rules
Norway Chess broke the chess world’s most stubborn habit — and the draw — in 2019, when the organisers introduced a rule that has since spread to several elite events. Every classical game that ends in a draw is immediately followed by an Armageddon decider in the same colours, but with reduced time and Black needing only a draw to win the half-point.
In practice, this means every classical game has a winner — by classical victory, or by Armageddon. Scoring rewards classical wins (3 points), Armageddon wins (1.5), and Armageddon draws-for-Black (1.5 to Black).
The field
Ten players. Five of the eight 2024 Candidates participants. The defending champion (Praggnanandhaa, 2025) and the absent two-time champion (Carlsen, 2023 & 2022) on the same starting line. Wei Yi, fresh off his Tata Steel 2026 victory, makes his Norway Chess debut.
The Norwegian press has settled on a single question: will Carlsen play to win, or to test ideas? The Stavanger crowd has been clear for fourteen years: they want him to play to win.
Series history
Started in 2013 as Norway Chess, organised by businessman Kjell Madland with the explicit goal of putting Stavanger on the chess world map. Magnus Carlsen has won six of the first thirteen editions (2014, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023). Other champions: Karjakin (2013, 2014), Mamedyarov (2015), Kramnik (2017), Caruana (2018), Firouzja (2024), Praggnanandhaa (2025).
The tournament is sponsored, unusually for chess, by a coalition of Norwegian energy companies, finance firms, and the city itself.