The long awaited news by chess enthusiasts around the world has arrived. The Grand Chess Tour has announced the wildcards for the European stages of this year’s tournament. 

As we are used to, the tournament will start with the Bucharest stage (4-16 May) where we will have the best Romanian chess player of the moment, Bogdan Deac, invited to play on a wildcard basis alongside top players of the world ranking. 

The competition in Warsaw will be full of surprises for the Polish public. Grand champion Magnus Carlsen has accepted our invitation again this year and will play in the Polish and Croatian stages. Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Bogdan Deac and Kirill Shevchenko have been invited to join the world number one. 

The Romanian chess player and Kirill Shevchenko will play under the Romanian flag, while grandmaster Radoslaw Wojtaszek will represent Poland “at home”. 

The Zagreb round of this year’s tournament brings the most surprises in terms of wildcard invitations. The Croatian public will have the pleasure to see Magnus Carlsen, Vishy Anand, D.Gukesh, Ivan Saric and Constantin Lupulescu as wildcard guests in the same competition. 

By far, the Grand Chess Tour 2023 has the best line-up in the history of the competition. The world’s best chess players will compete for a prize pool of $350,000 for the classic chess competitions and $175,000 for the rapid and blitz chess competitions.