Teenage world champion D Gukesh recently withdrew from the Tata Steel India Rapid and Blitz tournament in Kolkata for personal reasons, a rare move amid his packed schedule. With the FIDE World Championship defense looming in less than 10 months, Gukesh and R Praggnanandhaa are adopting a more selective approach to events in 2026, focusing on classical chess to avoid burnout. Experts highlight the mental fatigue from non-stop play affecting their performances.
Earlier this month, D Gukesh, the teenage world champion from Chennai, pulled out of the Tata Steel India Rapid and Blitz tournament in Kolkata. The official statement cited personal reasons, though Gukesh has remained silent on the matter. This withdrawal comes as he prepares to defend his title won in 2025, a burden that intensified his workload last year.
In November 2025, during the FIDE World Cup in Goa, Gukesh defended his intense schedule, stating, “I was telling myself, if I don’t push myself now, at this age, when am I going to push myself?” However, his coach Grzegorz Gajewski indicated a change for 2026 ahead of the ongoing Tata Steel Chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee. “For sure, he won’t be playing too many events. We will play in the most important ones... We are planning to stay active, but we will have to scale back. Some of the exhibition matches, online events, we will have to skip, that’s certain.”
India's chess prodigies—Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa, and Arjun Erigaisi—have historically shunned workload management, unlike athletes in other sports. Yet, signs of fatigue are emerging. Praggnanandhaa, after a stellar 2025, started the Wijk aan Zee event with two defeats and a draw. Peter Svidler, his 2024 coach, noted on the New In Chess podcast, “For Praggnanandhaa, 2025 was an unbelievable year. But he kind of trailed off at the end, because you cannot play this much chess. At some point, fatigue sets in to an extent where it becomes very difficult to manage.”
Coach Srinath Narayanan echoed this, referencing Praggnanandhaa's admission of spending only 15 days at home in 2025. “There is a factor of tiredness, fatigue in general... I do feel that there’s an effect of fatigue in Pragg’s recent tournaments.”
Svidler, drawing from his 2000 experience of six tournaments in three months, described calendar overload: “Just managing the calendar these days seems completely impossible... Six event invites never come in at the same time. They come drip, drip, drip. So you don’t realise immediately that if you say yes to all of these, you will collapse and need CPR.” With the Candidates and World Championship ahead, 2026 offers a chance to prioritize classical events over the experimental frenzy of 2025.
