Chess.com Officially Partners With Freestyle Chess To Support 2025 Grand Slam Tour
Chess.com is happy to announce a new partnership with Freestyle Chess to support the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. Chess.com will host the live coverage of the Tour and offer a qualification path for each event to any of our members, with the first qualifier starting on January 4!
Earlier this year, GM Magnus Carlsen and German entrepreneur Jan-Henric Buettner announced the ambitious Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. The Tour includes five extravagant events across five continents and over $4 million as the prize fund.
More recently, Carlsen and the world number-two player GM Fabiano Caruana met in Singapore before the 2024 FIDE World Chess Championship for a Freestyle Chess promotional match, where they played in a yacht and then inside a work of art to officially launch the 2025 Grand Slam Tour.
The Grand Slam Tour kicks off in Weissenhaus, Germany, on February 7-14. The remaining four events will be in Paris, France (April 8-15), New York, U.S.A (July 17-24), Delhi, India (September 17-24), and Cape Town, South Africa (December 5-12).
Fans can expect to see the very best players in the world competing in the Tour—only an exclusive group of 26 super-grandmasters are part of the Freestyle Chess Players Club and can be invited to play. The lineup for the first event includes GMs Carlsen, Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Levon Aronian, Alireza Firouzja, Vincent Keymer, and Viswanathan Anand. They will be joined by the newly-crowned 18th World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju.
The 10th and final spot will go to the winner of the online Freestyle Chess Play-In Weissenhaus taking place on Chess.com between January 4 and 8. Each Freestyle Chess Play-In will consist of open qualifiers for untitled players, followed by a Swiss and a knockout, all in rapid time controls. Titled players can join the qualifier on the Swiss stage, with the knockout winner earning a spot in the upcoming Grand Slam event.
Each 2025 Grand Slam Tour event will follow the same format as the highly successful 2024 Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge. Ten players will compete in a round-robin before moving on to a single-elimination knockout.
“We need great distribution, and Chess.com wants cool content,” said Buettner. “It’s a perfect match for growing the sport. Danny and I have become great friends, so it's good to work together."
“Freestyle Chess is a fresh and exciting format that breathes new life into the game. Players and fans really love it, and we’re excited to support Magnus Carlsen and Jan-Henric Buettner and their vision to revolutionize the competitive landscape of chess,” said IM Danny Rensch, Chess.com’s CCO.
In the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge, Carlsen came out as the champion after defeating Caruana in a thrilling final. Now, the question remains: can anyone challenge the Tour’s co-founder?
Who do you think will win the first event of the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour? Let us know in the comment section below!
