All 18 world chess champions in order, with the years of each reign, the match that won them the title, the years of the split and who the current champion is.
There have been eighteen world chess champions in the line of the undisputed title: the first was Wilhelm Steinitz, in 1886, and the current one is Gukesh Dommaraju of India, who took the title from Ding Liren in Singapore in December 2024. In November 2026 Gukesh defends it in Geneva against Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan. Between 1993 and 2006 the title was split in two, which is why some lists add four more names.
Each champion with his years and the match that won him the title. Alekhine and Botvinnik appear once, although they reigned in more than one period.
Before 1886 there were players everyone recognised as the strongest — Paul Morphy above all, in the 1850s — but there was no title won over the board. Steinitz and Zukertort played the first match announced as a world championship, and Steinitz won it by ten wins to five. His contribution was not only the title: he was the first to explain chess as a game of small advantages that accumulate, the foundation of what we now call positional strategy.
Lasker took the title in 1894 and held it until 1921, the longest reign in history. He was a practical fighter, more interested in his opponent than in the perfect move, and in those years the champion chose when and against whom to defend, with no governing body to make him.
Capablanca ended that in Havana in 1921. His chess looked simple — clean positions, flawless endgames — and for years he hardly lost a game. If that side of chess interests you, the rook endings he played from memory are in the guide to rook and pawn versus rook.
In 1927 Alekhine beat Capablanca in Buenos Aires in a 34-game match, most of it draws, and never granted him a rematch. He lost the title to Euwe in 1935, regained it in 1937 and died in 1946 as champion, the only one in history to do so.
FIDE, which until then had not run the championship, filled the gap: in 1948 it organised a match-tournament between the world's best, Botvinnik won it, and from then on the title was decided by a fixed cycle of qualifying events, a Candidates Tournament and a match against the champion.
For 24 years the title never left the Soviet Union. Botvinnik, an engineer and a methodical player, lost it twice — to Smyslov in 1957 and to Tal in 1960 — and both times won it back the following year thanks to the automatic return-match rule, which was later abolished.
Tal was the exception to everything Botvinnik stood for: sacrifices nobody could calculate at the board, attacks that worked because of the chaos they created. His life and games are in the article on Mikhail Tal, and his way of attacking is the subject of the course Mikhail Tal's Legacy.
Then came Petrosian, the great defender, who beat Botvinnik in 1963 and ended his title career, and Spassky, a universal player who beat Petrosian in 1969.
In 1972, at the height of the Cold War, Fischer beat Spassky in Reykjavik 12.5–8.5 in the most famous match of the century. It was the first time since the war that a non-Soviet player had won the title, and Fischer never played another official FIDE game: in 1975 he refused FIDE's conditions and Karpov was declared champion without playing. The whole story is in the article on Bobby Fischer.
Karpov earned the title afterwards, winning almost every tournament he played for a decade. In 1984 he began the match against Kasparov that never finished: it was halted after 48 games and replayed in 1985, when Kasparov won at 22. They met five times for the title and Karpov won none of them. What came next — Deep Blue included — is in the article on Garry Kasparov.
In 1993 Kasparov and his challenger, Nigel Short, played their match outside FIDE, and the title split in two. Kasparov remained champion of the "classical" line, the one that went back to Steinitz, and FIDE organised its own championship. On that side the champions were Karpov, Alexander Khalifman, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Rustam Kasimdzhanov and Veselin Topalov, who won the 2005 championship in San Luis, Argentina.
On the classical side, Kramnik beat Kasparov in London in 2000, with a weapon that changed elite openings: the Berlin Defence, which let him neutralise Kasparov's 1.e4 by steering the game into a queenless ending.
Why that position, with Black's king in the centre, is so hard for White to win is explained in the guide to the Berlin Defence. In 2006 Kramnik beat Topalov in Elista, the title was reunified and since then there has been a single champion again.
Anand won the 2007 Mexico City tournament that decided the title and confirmed it the following year in a match against Kramnik. He defended it against Topalov in 2010 and against Boris Gelfand in 2012, and lost it to Carlsen in Chennai, his home city, in 2013.
Carlsen defended it four times: against Anand in 2014, Sergey Karjakin in 2016, Fabiano Caruana in 2018 — all twelve classical games were drawn and the rapid tiebreak decided it — and Nepomniachtchi in 2021. In 2023 he chose not to play the match again, and the title was contested by Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren in Astana: Ding won in the rapid tiebreak.
In 2024, in Singapore, Gukesh beat Ding 7.5–6.5 with a win in the last classical game and became the youngest champion in history, at 18. In April 2026 Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan won the Candidates Tournament in Cyprus with 10 points out of 14 and no losses, and he is the challenger in the match that starts in Geneva on 24 November.
Going through the champions in order is a way of seeing how chess evolved: from the attacks of Morphy's era to Steinitz's strategy, from Capablanca's precision to Botvinnik's scientific preparation, from Tal's sacrifices to Kasparov's universality and Carlsen's endless endgames. Each style can be studied through its games.
To start, pick two or three champions with opposite styles and play through their annotated games, covering the next move and trying to guess it. Then move on to combinations: the course Tactical masters: from Morphy to Shirov goes through the ideas of Morphy, Steinitz, Tal, Fischer, Kasparov and Shirov, four of them world champions. And if you want to understand what each champion's rating means, the guide to how Elo is calculated explains it with numbers.
Open classTopalov–Shirov, Linares 1998: 47…Bh3!!with GM Alexei Shirov · 12 min · no account needed1 h 3 min of recorded class. Create your free account, no card needed, and it stays in «Recordings» to watch whenever you like.
If you want to put this into practice with structured material:
Explore Mikhail Tal's boldest ideas to learn how to attack, sacrifice, and create chaos on the board without losing control of the position.
By GM Andrés Rodríguez Vila and GM Diego Flores
Included in the membership
Explore the brilliant ideas of six legendary tactical geniuses in chess history: Morphy, Steinitz, Tal, Fischer, Kasparov, and Shirov.
By GM Andrés Rodríguez Vila and GM Diego Flores
Included in the membership
Who Alexei Shirov is, how he became a world title challenger, why his 47...Bh3 against Topalov is one of chess's most famous moves and what his style teaches.
Read the articleWho Garry Kasparov is, how he beat Karpov for the title in 1985, his 1999 immortal against Topalov, the Deep Blue matches and what his style teaches.
Read the articleWho Bobby Fischer was, the 1956 Game of the Century, how he took the world title from Spassky in 1972, why he gave it up and what he left to modern chess.
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