The Chess Olympiad

Origins

An unofficial first Chess Olympiad was held in Paris in 1924, timed alongside that year's Summer Olympic Games — and FIDE itself was founded on the very last day of that event, July 20, 1924. The first fully official, FIDE-organized Olympiad followed in London in 1927. Despite the name, the event has no formal link to the Olympic Games; it simply borrowed the name and, loosely, the spirit of nations competing against nations.

It was held annually (if irregularly) until the disruption of the Second World War, and has run on a steady two-year cycle ever since 1950.

How It Works

Any FIDE member federation can enter a team, typically four regular players plus one reserve. Matches are played across all four boards at once, with each individual game's result contributing to the match score — 2 match points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss — across roughly eleven rounds. Open and Women's sections are contested simultaneously as separate events at the same Olympiad.

Eras of Dominance

The Soviet Union dominated the open Olympiad for most of the second half of the 20th century, winning the large majority of events from the 1950s through the USSR's dissolution in 1991. Since then, the gold medal has spread across a wider range of countries: China won in 2014 and again in 2018, the United States won in 2016, and India achieved a breakthrough win in 2024 — its first-ever open Olympiad gold.