D Gukesh is the top seed, Arjun Erigaisi and R Praggnanandhaa are the second and third seeds. Meanwhile, the top 50 players have been given a bye into the second round.

Also berths for the 2026 Candidates are stake! The top three players will quaify for the tournament next year, which is a qualifier for a the World C’ship showdown vs Gukesh.

The Indian Round 1 pairings are:

GMP and You Can kubrry – ISS CASE through R.

IM Harshavardhan GB – GM Mustafa Yilmaz (TUR)

IM Steven Rojas Salas (PER) – GM SL Narayanan

GM Pranav Venkaates

GM Iniyan Pa – GM Dylan Isidro Berdayes Ason (CUB)

GM Max Warmerum (NED) – GM Lilt Rohit

GM Xiongjian Peng (CHN) – GM Diptayan Ghosh

GM Roberto Garcia Pantoja (COL) – GM Karthik Venkataraman

GM Raunak Sadhwani – GM Daniel Barrish (RSA)

GM Georg Meiier (URU) – AND Neelash Saha

GM Leon Luke Mendonca – IM Shixu Wang B (CHN)

GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly – GM Ahmad Ahmadzada (AZE)

GM Divya Deshmukh – GM Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis (GRE)

GM Pranesh M – IM Satbek Akhmedinov (KAZ)

GM Mateusz Bartel (POL) – IM Aronyak Ghosh

GM Andy Woodward (USA) – IM Himal Gusain

The tournament is an eight-round knockout event, and the losing players of the two semifinals will face each other for a third-place finish. Each round will also have a classical time limit on the first two days, and tie-breaks will be added on the third day if needed.