Faustino Oro: the Argentine prodigy who became a GM at 12

Faustino Oro is an Argentine chess player, born in Buenos Aires on 14 October 2013, who in May 2026, aged 12, completed the requirements to become a grandmaster: the second youngest in history, behind only Abhimanyu Mishra. He learnt to play during the 2020 lockdown, became the youngest International Master of his time in 2024, and FIDE confirmed his grandmaster title in August 2026.

Who Faustino Oro is

Faustino was born in Buenos Aires and lives with his family in Badalona, near Barcelona. They moved there so he could compete regularly on the European circuit, which has far more strong open tournaments each year than South America. He still goes to school and plays for Argentina.

At home he is known as "the Messi of chess", a nickname that has become so common that FIDE itself used it when announcing his title. Beyond the easy comparison, what makes him remarkable is the speed: in six years he went from not knowing how the pieces move to being one of the youngest grandmasters ever.

As of 20 October 2026 he has just turned 13, and on the October 2026 FIDE rating list he is rated 2560 in classical chess. If you are not sure what that number means, our guide on how Elo is calculated explains it.

How it started: the 2020 lockdown

The story every outlet tells is the same: Faustino learnt to play in 2020, aged six, when the pandemic kept half the world at home. His father, a keen amateur, taught him the moves, and from then on he played a huge amount online.

It is a detail worth noticing. Not long ago, the typical prodigy's path was a club from an early age and a coach soon after. Oro belongs to a generation that played its first few thousand games on a screen and only later moved to the physical board and to tournaments with a clock.

That does not mean you can go far on fast online games alone: his real progress came when he started playing classical tournaments against stronger opponents, with long games that are analysed afterwards. If that debate interests you, we cover it in blitz or long games to improve?.

The Carlsen game and the International Master record

Two things happened in 2024 that took him out of the Argentine chess scene and into news around the world.

The first was a bullet game —one minute per player— in an online Chess.com tournament, in which he beat Magnus Carlsen, the world number one. It is worth keeping in proportion: a bullet game is not a classical game, and Carlsen plays hundreds of them. But a 10-year-old beating the best player on the planet, even at that speed, was enough for much of the chess world to start following him.

The second mattered more for his career. In June 2024, at a closed tournament in Barcelona that he won unbeaten with 6.5 out of 9, he earned the last norm he needed to become an International Master (IM). He did it at 10 years, 8 months and 16 days, becoming the youngest IM in history, ahead of Abhimanyu Mishra, who had held the mark since 2019 at 10 years, 9 months and 3 days. The record did not last long: in January 2025 it was broken by Russia's Roman Shogdzhiev.

The road to grandmaster: Madrid, Buenos Aires, Moscow and Sardinia

To become a grandmaster (GM) you need two things: three "norms" —GM-level results in tournaments that meet certain conditions on opponents and titles— and to have reached a FIDE rating of 2500 at some point. Oro put them together in eight months.

• Madrid, September 2025. He won the Legends and Prodigies tournament unbeaten with 7.5 out of 9, a point and a half ahead of grandmasters such as Peru's Julio Granda. There he earned his first norm and passed 2500, a barrier nobody had crossed so young.
• Buenos Aires, December 2025. At the Szmetan-Giardelli Masters he scored 5.5 out of 9 and secured his second norm with a draw in the final round against grandmaster Diego Flores.
• Moscow, February and March 2026. At the Aeroflot Open he had a chance to break the outright record: he reached the last round needing a win to complete his third norm before Mishra's age. He lost to Russian grandmaster Aleksey Grebnev and the record slipped out of reach.
• Italy, May 2026. At the Sardinia World Chess Festival he scored 6 out of 9, with a key win in round eight against Bartłomiej Niedbała, and completed his third norm.

At that moment he was 12 years, 6 months and 26 days old. FIDE formally approved the title at its council meeting in August 2026.

Is he the youngest grandmaster in history?

No, and it is worth saying plainly because the opposite is often repeated. The youngest players to complete the title are:

• Abhimanyu Mishra (United States): 12 years, 4 months and 25 days, in 2021. Still the record.
• Faustino Oro (Argentina): 12 years, 6 months and 26 days, in 2026.
• Sergey Karjakin (Ukraine, later Russia): 12 years and 7 months, in 2002. He held the record for almost twenty years, until Mishra.

In other words, Oro is the second youngest grandmaster in history, and he took that place from Karjakin by a few days. The game he lost in Moscow was, quite literally, the difference between first and second.

For perspective: Bobby Fischer, for decades the byword for precocity, became a grandmaster at 15. Today computers, databases and online chess have sped everything up, which is why the age records have fallen so far in the last twenty years. That takes nothing away from anyone: everyone on that list had access to the same tools as thousands of other children.

What Faustino Oro's path teaches

What Faustino has done is exceptional and there is no point comparing yourself. But his path has a few lessons that work for anyone who wants to improve, at any age:

• Play stronger people. His rating jumps came in events where almost every opponent was a master or grandmaster. Losing to someone better teaches more than beating someone weaker.
• Long games matter. Bullet made him famous, but the norms came from classical games, with time to think and plan.
• Every game gets reviewed. Nobody climbs like that without looking at what happened afterwards, especially in defeats. If you do not know where to start, we have a guide on how to analyse your own games.
• Over-the-board play is a different thing. The physical clock, the fatigue of nine rounds and the nerves cannot be trained online. If you have never played a tournament, read how to prepare for your first one.

And if you wonder whether a child has to start at six to go far, the short answer is no: we discuss it in what age should a child start chess.

Studying his games at AcademiaTal

The course Elite Chess: Annotated Games and English Opening devotes two lessons to annotated games by Faustino Oro. Seeing how a player like him handles concrete positions, explained move by move, is the best way to go from the headlines to the board.

The same course reviews great moments from the 2024 Olympiad and offers a practical English Opening repertoire without the fianchetto. If that opening interests you, read our English Opening guide first. The lessons are in Spanish with English subtitles, and the course is included in the subscriptions that open the whole catalogue.

Faustino Oro is 13 and has a career ahead of him that is still being written: the facts in this article are as of 20 October 2026. What will not change is how he got here, and that is something you can study.