We are four weeks apart from the long-anticipated FIDE Candidates Tournament 2024 which will determine the World Championship Challenger for the 2025 match, but the playing venue is not yet confirmed.
BREAKING: All players receive visa approval for the Candidates Tournament 2024!
FIDE and the Local Organizing Committee faced serious trouble with the players’ visa issue, as 11 players hadn’t received their visas last week. FIDE sent an urgent visa appeal to the Canadian Government, and 10 players received permission to travel to Canada, says Mr. Vlad Drkulec, the President of the Canadian Chess Federation. Commenting on the chess.com post, Drkulec explains that one player in the Open section, one official, and five accompanying persons are still waiting for their visas. And only two days left for the Canadian Government to make a decision, according to the deadline set by FIDE.
FIDE CEO Mr. Emil Sutovsky yesterday posted on his official Twitter account that the event is under threat of relocation until every player who needs a visa gets it. He added that the deadline is Friday, 8th of March. If any player has an unsolved status after the mentioned deadline, FIDE might go for a plan B and move the event to Spain.
As Chesstopics wrote earlier, as many as 11 players from 4 countries were affected by visa issues (probably players from Azerbaijan, China, India, and Russia: Ian Nepomniachtchi, Praggnanandhaa R, Vidit Santosh Gujrathi, Gukesh D, Nijat Abasov in the Open section, and Lei Tingjie, Aleksandra Goryachkina, Kateryna Lagno, Vaishali R, Tan Zhongyi and Humpy Koneru in the Womenโs section). The visa issue is now down to one player, and hopefully will get solved by the end of the week.
The tournament is an eight-player, double round-robin tournament, with 14 rounds where each player is facing the others twice: once with the black pieces and once with the white pieces.
