"VAN" (Sports Desk - 15.11.2025) :: The second edition of the FIDE World Corporate Chess Championship began today in Goa, alongside the FIDE World Cup, bringing together leading international companies to compete for a World Championship title. The event highlights how chess is becoming part of modern workplaces and offers employee teams a global stage to represent their organisations.
This year’s finals feature 11 teams, selected from hundreds of companies through online qualifiers and joined by a few invited wild cards. The field spans technology, finance, consulting, engineering, and fast-growing firms from emerging markets. The FWCCC has a clear identity: only true corporate teams take part. Every player is a full-time employee, manager, or board member, and organisations directly connected to chess are not eligible.
At the opening ceremony, FIDE Secretary General Lukasz Turlej welcomed participants, saying: “On behalf of the International Chess Federation, I am happy to welcome everyone to Goa. This championship connects the corporate world with the universal language of chess in a special way. We appreciate the All India Chess Federation, the Goa Chess Federation, the Government of Goa, and the Prime Minister of India for enabling us to hold this event here. The corporate chess community is growing quickly, and I am confident we will keep developing these initiatives together in the future. I wish all the teams great games in this unique place, the home of the World Cup and many of the world’s top players this month.”
Format
The 11 teams play a two-day group stage followed by knockout playoffs on Sunday. All matches use a rapid time control of 10 minutes plus a 3-second increment across four boards. The group stage is a round-robin, with match points deciding the standings and game points as the secondary tiebreak.
After Saturday’s group stage, the top two teams from each group advance to the semifinals.
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