The Candidates Tournament is the most prestigious event behind the World Championship itself. It is 8 player double round robin tournament that determines the World Championship challenger in the next cycle.
Current player rankings and Elo scores (updated 27.3.2026) are:
Hikaru Nakamura (#2) - 2810
Fabiano Caruana (#3) - 2793
Wei Yi (#8) - 2754
Anish Giri (#9) - 2753
Javokhir Sindarov (#11) - 2745
Praggnanandhaa R (#12) - 2741
Andrey Esipenko (#32) - 2698
Matthias Blübaum (#34) - 2695
However Candidates tournaments are usually pretty chaotic and often the biggest favorites do not win.
Update 2025-12-02 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): If a player steps down before the tournament and is replaced, the market options will be updated to replace the old player with the new player.
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Well calibrated Naka!
How good are his chances, exactly? Nakamura dismissed Chess.com's suggestion that he was a 40% favorite—"That's completely wrong," he said, laughing. "No one is a clear favorite," and he estimated his own odds closer to 20%. He said that up to seven players have a chance of winning, depending on how the tournament shapes up.
https://www.chess.com/news/view/2026-fide-candidates-tournament-preview
@bens I will replace the old player with the new player. But I think it is very unlikely in this edition when there are no covid issues or magnus not wanting to participate.
@bens 2 of those were Magnus being Magnus, 1 was Radjabov because it was March 2020, the other was Karjakin because of geopolitics. Who out of this field would withdraw?