2026 XTX Markets London Chess Classic - LCC Challengers
In a new event for the London Chess Classic, the LCC Challengers sees 10 Grandmasters and International Masters battling it out for the right to join next year’s LCC Masters line-up.
LCC Challengers 2026
Loek Van Wely (NLD), ELO 2627
Rinat Jumabayev (KAZ), ELO 2564
Mateusz Bartel (POL), ELO 2549
Daniel Fernandez (ENG), ELO 2530
Eytan Rozen (ISR), ELO 2509
Harry Grieve (ENG), ELO 2505
Roman Dehtiarov (UKR), ELO 2502
Carissa Yip (USA), ELO 2484
Harika Dronavalli (IND), ELO 2453
Supratit Banerjee (ENG), ELO 2420
Challengers’ Biographies
Former Wijk aan Zee regular and eight-time Dutch Champion, Loek van Wely needs little introduction. Now 54, he is an exception to the rule that ratings tend to plummet with age. Indeed, he is still in the world’s top-hundred players, as well as being ranked sixth in the world when you look only at those aged over 50.
Every January, one of the world’s leading chess festivals takes place on the north Dutch coast at Wijk aan Zee, supported by the local steelworks. The top section, currently known as the Tata Steel Masters, has been one of the world’s leading tournaments for decades, sometimes the strongest. Between 1992 and 2017, van Wely only missed playing at Wijk once, while defeating such legends of the game as former world champions Anatoly Karpov and Veselin Topalov, as well as Britain’s Nigel Short.
Van Wely was a member of the Dutch Senate from 2019 until 2023, but is now once again very active as a player, competing in tournaments and leagues. This year he has racked up a significant number of appearances in the Dutch League, French Team Championship and German Bundesliga, as well as playing for his country at the Samarkand Olympiad.
Loek Van Wely
Rating: 2627
Country: Netherlands
Chess is flourishing in Central Asia, predominantly in Uzbekistan, but to the north of there it is also in decent health in Kazakhstan, which hosted the 2022 FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championships. 37-year-old Rinat Jumabayev has long been one of the leading Kazakh players, often their top one, and is perhaps best known for eliminating world no.2 Fabiano Caruana at the 2021 FIDE World Cup.
A grandmaster since 2009, Jumabayev loves to play in Chess.com’s leading weekly blitz events, where he has of late defeated the likes of speed king Hikaru Nakamura and Polish no.1 Jan-Krzysztof Duda. He is also highly active over the board, having this year competed in tournaments in France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Norway and Uzbekistan, sharing first in October at the strong Fagernes Autumn Swiss in eastern Norway.
Jumabayev’s rating has been as high as 2658 and he may outperform his seeding of second in the Challengers on this, his first appearance at the London Chess Classic. He is technically very strong and loves to press after either 1 e4 or his favourite Catalan Opening, but is also more than capable of attacking should the position allow it.
Rinat Jumabayev
Rating: 2564
Country: Kazakhstan
Mateusz Bartel makes a welcome return to the London Chess Classic, having scored 4½/9 in 2023, defeating Luke McShane and Hans Niemann, while finishing just a point and a half behind tournament winner Michael Adams. A four-time Polish Champion, 41-year-old Bartel has spent much of his career firmly inside the world’s top-100.
He has represented Poland in five Olympiads, winning individual gold at Khanty-Mansiysk in 2010. Other career highlights include winning the strong Opens on the Isle of Man in 2007, the Aeroflot Open at Moscow in 2012, and at the famous Biel Chess Festival in 2017.
Married to Polish WGM Marta Przezdziecka, Bartel remains pretty active as a player, not least in team competitions. As well as the Polish Ekstraliga, he is a regular in the German Bundesliga, where he held Fabiano Caruana to a draw earlier this year. Lengthy dogged defence is one feature of his game; another is the array of slightly offbeat but extremely well-honed weapons which form his opening repertoire and help to make him a danger to all.
Mateusz Bartel
Rating: 2549
Country: Poland
Daniel Fernandez
Rating: 2530
Country: England
Daniel Fernandez has enjoyed an excellent twelve months, winning the Commonwealth Championship in Kuala Lumpur last November, then going on to make his England debut at the recent Samarkand Olympiad. At the start of the year, he even enjoyed a trip Down Under, tying for first in the 133rd New Zealand Open Championship, then finishing second behind Michael Adams at the Bob Wade Memorial in Auckland.
Long one of the UK’s most active grandmasters, Fernandez always enjoys competing on the continent and tied for first in the strong Scheldemond College Open at Vlissingen in the Netherlands. As well as the British League, the 4NCL, he has competed this year in its Belgian, Catalan and French equivalents, while at the Menorca Open he defeated one of Russia’s top players, 2024 World Rapid Champion Volodar Murzin.
A former British Under-18 and Under-21 Champion, as well as a Cambridge graduate, Fernandez has also produced some most instructional books and videos, mainly on his favourite openings. Ever happy to plough his own furrow, he often likes to escape theory at a refreshingly early stage of the game, while being a noted authority on a number of highly practical opening lines.
Eytan Rozen became a grandmaster this year at the age of 20, which was the least his consistency deserved, having been rated over the key 2500 threshold for most of the past two years, as well as extremely active. This year he has featured in not just the Israeli League, but also in the prestigious German Bundesliga and even the European Club Cup, the chess equivalent of the Champions League.
Largely a positional player, Rozen is quite at home in a wide range of set-ups, including, fittingly, the English Opening. Unlike his near-namesake, American IM and streamer Eric Rosen, Eytan is not, however, a big fan of the London System, but did compete in the Open at last year’s London Chess Classic, making a small rating gain after finishing on 6½/9, only losing to compatriot Ilia Smirin and leading Indian Grandmaster Praggnanandhaa.
Eytan Rozen
Rating: 2509
Country: Israel
While studying at Cambridge University, Harry Grieve served notice to the world of his chess talent as he sprang a small surprise, winning the 2022 British Championship at Torquay. That impressive result encouraged him to turn professional after graduating in mathematics, and in May this year he finally scored his third GM norm in Budapest to become England’s newest grandmaster and 43rd ever.
Grieve has already won a large number of tournaments, including the 2025 Vitoria-Gazteiz International Open in Spain. He has also won the 4NCL in 2024/25, where his 9½/11 played a significant role in Manx Liberty winning the title, two years after he had made his second GM norm in the British League while playing for The Sharks.
He finished fourth in this summer’s British Championship at the University of Warwick, notably going all-in as Black on top board in the final round, where he would come up short against Shreyas Royal. Definitely fearless at the board, Grieve combines excellent calculation with deep opening preparation and may well gain a large early advantage in more than one game in the Challengers.
Harry Grieve
Rating: 2505
Country: England
Then aged 17, Roman Dehtiarov was largely unknown back in April when he took part in the European Individual Championship on the shores of the Black Sea. Indeed, he only lined up in Batumi as the 126th seed, but became the first-ever International Master to win the tournament, doing so in style too, his score of 9/11 the equivalent of a 2772 rating performance.
That was one of the chess stories of the year and was fully deserved. While playing some extremely creative attacking chess, Dehtiarov defeated four highly experienced and strong grandmasters in the final four rounds, including Maxime Lagarde, who has played at the London Chess Classic before, and Spanish no.1 David Anton Guijarro.
Winning the European Championship automatically makes you a Grandmaster and Dehtiarov has maintained his rating since, while making his Olympiad debut for Ukraine. He hails from Kharkiv and declined the chance to flee when Russia invaded, preferring to remain at home alongside his father. Experiencing life near the front line is something few European teenagers have to endure, but clearly hasn’t done Dehtiarov’s chess any harm. Will he now become but the latest Ukrainian to make the leap into the world top-100?
Roman Dehtariov
Rating: 2502
Country: Ukraine
Carissa Yip
Rating: 2484
Country: USA
It feels as if Carissa Yip has been around the chess world for a long time and yet the Bostonian is only 23 years old. Not only is she academically gifted, studying at Stanford University, but she has also packed an awful lot of chess into her life and a lot of successful chess at that.
At the age of 10, she became the then youngest-ever girl to defeat a Grandmaster in a tournament game, a record now held by English prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan. Yip first competed in the US Women’s Championship as a 13-year-old in 2016, going on to win the tournament in 2021, a feat she repeated in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The number-one female player in the States, Yip won team bronze and individual gold at the 2024 Budapest Olympiad, then won individual silver on board one at this year’s Olympiad at Samarkand, where she racked up 8/10, sufficient for a 2601 performance. With two GM norms already in the bank and her sights set firmly on a 2500 rating, Yip will arrive at the London Chess Classic determined to secure her third and final norm.
Harika Dronavalli
Rating: 2453
Country: India
35-year-old Harika Dronavalli has long enjoyed celebrity status in India, where chess ranks second only to cricket in public popularity. Talented from a young age, she became a Woman Grandmaster in 2004 and a full Grandmaster in 2011, only the second Indian woman to become one.
Long one of the world’s leading female players, Harika has enjoyed plenty of success both in the Women’s World Championship and while representing her country. She has finished third three times in huge world championship knockout events and won Gold with India in the 2024 Women’s Olympiad at Budapest. Two years earlier, India had hosted the Olympiad at Chennai, where their Women’s team won bronze, including Harika who was then nine months pregnant with her first child.
The current Asian Women’s Rapid and Blitz Champion has an impressive CV, but would love to add victory in a major mixed event to it. Might this ever well-prepared, manoeuvring maestro pull off a small shock and manage it at this year’s London Chess Classic?
Supratit Banerjee
Rating: 2420
Country: England
The recent FIDE Congress confirmed Supratit Banerjee’s International Master title, making the 12-year-old from Sutton, south London, England’s youngest-ever IM. He crossed the 2300 rating threshold in May last year, becoming an 11-year-old FM, then earned his first IM norm at that summer’s British Championship in Liverpool.
Banerjee’s rating continued to rise steadily before he secured his second IM norm at Sheffield in July this year, which also took his rating up to 2357. He then gained 36 rating points at the 2026 British Championship, where even a last-round defeat at the hands of Michael Adams couldn’t prevent him from earning his third norm. For good measure, he added a fourth straight after at a tournament in Stockholm, picking up a further 27 rating points to secure the title.
Born in Glasgow, Banerjee made rapid progress once taught how to play by his father, while already showing that ability to work hard on his own which has been the hallmark of many great champions. While remaining impressively modest, he would surely love to break Shreyas Royal’s record of 15 years and seven months to become England’s youngest-ever Grandmaster. Banerjee may well rise far beyond that, with every sign so far suggesting he could easily reach the coveted 2600+ ranks.
