The 2025 Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam features a unique format randomizes the starting positions of the back-rank pieces, reducing the impact of memorized opening theory. First there will be round robin mini tournament for seeding (where 2 players are eliminated) and then a single elimination bracket will be played in the classical time control (2 classical matches + tiebreaks).

In the previous year a similar tournament was won by Magnus Carlsen.

There was also a lot of drama between Carlsen/Freestyle Chess and FIDE (for example here or here). This will be the first event of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam tour.

Event info: https://www.chess.com/events/2025-freestyle-chess-grand-slam-weissenhaus-round-robin