The Candidates Tournament (or in some periods Candidates Matches) is a chess tournament organized by FIDE, chess's international governing body, since 1950, as the final contest to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship. The winner of the Candidates earns the right to a match for the World Championship against the incumbent world champion. Before 1993 it was contested as a triennial tournament; almost always held every third year from 1950 to 1992 inclusive. After the split of the World Championship in the early 1990s, the cycles were disrupted, even after the reunification of the titles in 2006. Since 2013 it has settled into a 2-year cycle: qualification for Candidates during the odd numbered year, Candidates played early in the even numbered year, and the World Championship match played late in the even numbered year. The latter half of the 2020 Candidates Tournament was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was only played in April 2021. The next tournament, the 2022 Candidates Tournament, took place as scheduled in 2022.

Precursors

Before 1950, the champion had the right to handpick a challenger. However, a number of tournaments acted as de facto candidates tournaments:

Organization

The number of players in the tournament varied over the years, between eight and fifteen players. Most of these qualified from Interzonal tournaments, though some gained direct entry without having to play the Interzonal. The first Interzonal/Candidates World Championship cycle began in 1948. Before 1965, the tournament was organized in a round-robin format. From 1965 on, the tournament was played as knockout matches, spread over several months. In 1995–1996, the defending FIDE champion (Anatoly Karpov) also entered the Candidates, in the third round (Candidates final). During its 1993 to 2006 split from FIDE, the "Classical" World Championship also held three Candidates Tournaments (in 1994–1995, 1998 and 2002) under a different sponsor and a different format each time. In one of these cases (Alexei Shirov in 1998) no title match eventuated, under disputed circumstances (see Classical World Chess Championship 2000). After the reunification of titles in 2006, FIDE tried different Candidates formats in 2007, 2009 and 2011, before settling on an 8 player, double round robin Candidates tournament from 2013 onwards.

Results of Candidates Tournaments

The tables below show the qualifiers and results for all interzonal, Candidates and world championship tournaments. Normally, the incumbent champion is seeded directly into the final against the challenger (who had to pass through the Candidates qualification), but there have been exceptions: The incumbent champion Bobby Fischer refused to defend his title at the World Chess Championship 1975, and his challenger Anatoly Karpov won by forfeit. (At the time, the Candidates was a knock-out event, so the 1974 Karpov–Korchnoi Candidates final match – a best of 24 games, like world championships in the period 1951–1972 and 1985–1993 – arguably became a de facto world championship in retrospect.) Magnus Carlsen refused to defend his title at the World Chess Championship 2023 and was replaced by the runner-up of the Candidates Tournament, Ding Liren.

Interzonal and Candidates tournaments (1948–1996)

Split titles (1997–2005)

After 1996, interzonals ceased to exist, but FIDE continued to organize qualifying zonal tournaments.

Reunified title (since 2006)

After the reunification of the FIDE and "classical" titles, the Chess World Cup and FIDE Grand Prix series were introduced as qualification for the Candidates Tournament. The Swiss-system FIDE Grand Swiss was introduced in the latter half of 2019, acting as another qualification path for the 2020 Candidates Tournament.