The Tata Steel Chess Tournament is an annual chess tournament held in January in

Wijk aan Zee Wijk aan Zee (; ) is a village on the coast of the North Sea in the municipality of Beverwijk, the province of North Holland of the Netherlands. The prestigious Tata Steel Chess Tournament (formerly called the Corus chess tournament or the Hoogove ...

, the Netherlands. It was called the Hoogovens Tournament from its creation in 1938 until the sponsor Koninklijke Hoogovens merged with British Steel to form the Corus Group in 1999, after which the tournament was renamed the Corus Chess Tournament. Corus Group was taken over by the

Tata Group The Tata Group () is an Indian multinational conglomerate group of companies headquartered in Mumbai. Established in 1868, it is India's largest business conglomerate, with products and services in over 160 countries, and operations in 100 c ...

and became

Tata Steel Europe Tata Steel Europe Ltd. (formerly Corus Group plc) was a steelmaking company headquartered in London, England, with its main operations in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The company was created in 2007, when Tata Group took over the Br ...

in 2007, with the tournament changing to its current name in 2011. It has also been referred to as "Wijk aan Zee" since the venue change from the town of Beverwijk to the town of

in 1968. Despite the name changes, the series is numbered sequentially from its Hoogovens beginnings; for example, the 2025 event was referred to as the 87th Tata Steel Chess Tournament. Top grandmasters compete in the tournament, but regular club players are welcome to play in the lower groups. The Masters group pits fourteen of the world's best players against each other in a

round-robin tournament A round-robin tournament or all-play-all tournament is a competition format in which each contestant meets every other participant, usually in turn.''Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1971, G. & ...

, and has sometimes been described as the "

Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * W ...

of Chess". Since 1938, there has been a long list of very strong winners; of the fifteen undisputed World Chess Champions since the first tournament in 1938, only five –

Alexander Alekhine Alexander Aleksandrovich Alekhine. He disliked when Russians sometimes pronounced the of as , , which he regarded as a Yiddish distortion of his name, and insisted that the correct Russian pronunciation was . (March 24, 1946) was a Russian ...

, Vasily Smyslov,

Bobby Fischer Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943January 17, 2008) was an American Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Chess Champi ...

, Ding Liren and

Gukesh Dommaraju Gukesh Dommaraju (born 29 May 2006) is an Indian chess grandmaster and the reigning World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, Gukesh is the youngest undisputed world champion, the youngest player to have surpassed a FIDE rating of 2750, doing s ...

– have not won it. In 2001, nine of the top ten players in the world participated. Magnus Carlsen holds the record for most wins at the tournament, with eight. Viswanathan Anand is the only other player to have won the event five or more times, with five titles to his name. R Praggnanandhaa is the defending champion after defeating Gukesh in the tiebreaks in

2025 So far, the year has seen the continuation of major armed conflicts, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Sudanese civil war (2023–present), Sudanese civil war, and the Gaza war. Internal crises in Bangladesh post-resignation v ...

. Until recently, players ending on the same score shared the title. The first tie-break was held in 2018, with

Magnus Carlsen Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster. Carlsen is a five-time World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion, five-time World Rapid Chess Championship, World Rapid Chess Champio ...

defeating Anish Giri to clinch the title. As of the 2025 edition, if two or more players lead with the same score at the end of the round-robin, they all take part in the tiebreaks to determine the sole winner. The

time control A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can proceed. For turn-based games such as chess, shogi or go, time cont ...

of the tiebreaks is blitz, and then sudden death.

Tournament history

Hoogovens Beverwijk

The early tournaments were very small, starting with groups of four in 1938, and entry restricted to Dutch players. The first four tournaments continued this way, until 1942, when it was expanded to six players, and in 1943 to eight players. No tournament was held in 1945 due to

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. The first international tournament was held in 1946, with the field expanded to ten, and invitations to Alberic O'Kelly de Galway (Belgium) and Gösta Stoltz (Sweden) along with a Dutch contingent of eight. The 1946 tournament was one of the first European international chess tournaments after World War II. Food shortages were still a problem in Europe, so the post-tournament banquet featured

pea soup Pea soup or split pea soup is soup made typically from dried peas, such as the split pea. It is, with variations, a part of the cuisine of many cultures. It is most often greyish-green or yellow in color depending on the regional variety of pea ...

, "inexpensive fare of the common people". In subsequent years pea soup has been served as the first course of the concluding banquet, a tradition continued when the tournament was moved from Beverwijk to Wijk aan Zee. The tournament field was increased to twelve in 1953, and an international women's tournament was also held. In 1954, the tournament field was returned to ten players, but the strength of the competitions increased. The field was greatly enlarged to 18 in 1963, and although it reduced to 16 in 1964, the event had become the strongest international chess tournament in the world. As the tournament grew in stature, it began to offer lower groups such as a B-group (sometimes called "Challengers" in contrast to group-A or "Masters"), and occasionally a C-group. There also began a tradition to operate a year on year policy of inviting the winner of the B-group to the A-group. The winners of the top group were: :