World Blitz Championships: Arjun Erigaisi ends year with bittersweet bronze, Magnus Carlsen makes a comeback for ages to win title

Arjun Erigaisi ended a year of heartbreak with some more heartache: missing out on a medal of a better colour at the World Blitz Championship after an imperious run into the semi-finals. Erigaisi did end the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championship with two bronze medals, adding a Blitz bronze on Tuesday to the Rapid bronze medal he had claimed on Sunday. But the form that Erigaisi was in over the past two days since the blitz format started in Doha, he could have easily won the whole thing.

India thus finished the prestigious year-ending tournament with three medals, all bronze, with Koneru Humpy also ending in third place in the Women’s Rapid Championship.

Meanwhile, Magnus Carlsen made a comeback for the ages to claim the World Blitz Championship for the ninth time, defeating Nodirbek Abdusattorov in the final. Both Carlsen and Abdusattorov had snuck into the semi-finals at the last minute while Erigaisi and Fabiano Caruana (who shared bronze with Arjun) had been at the top of the standings for plenty of the race. But in the semi-finals, Erigaisi and Caruana could not summon the same form that had helped them top the standings.

“Probably one of the hardest-earned world championship titles,” Carlsen told FIDE right after defeating Abdusattorov in a final where he had lost the first game with an uncanny blunder.

Carlsen and Erigaisi thus became the only two players at the World Rapid and Blitz Championship in Doha to take home two medals with Carlsen winning twin golds.

The World Blitz Championship was a microcosm of the last couple of years that Erigaisi has had: playing imperious chess throughout, but faltering just at the end.

The current World Championship cycle had seen Erigaisi put himself in pole position for a Candidates spot, which was his biggest goal for 2025, in multiple pathways, but missed out by narrow margins. Erigaisi could have secured a spot into the Candidates via the 2024 FIDE Circuit after leading that race most of the year, but then saw Caruana take top spot right at the end by winning back-to-back titles at the US Masters and the Saint Louis Masters. At the Grand Swiss in 2025, Erigaisi was again in the running to finish in the top 2, which would have earned him a Candidates spot, but had ended 6th in the standings, just half a point behind Matthias Bluebaum, who took the second spot. At the FIDE World Cup in Goa too, he was ousted in the quarters.

Similarly, at the World Blitz Championship, Erigaisi had topped the standings from out of 252 players in the Open section. He had discovered such hot form that he had secured his semi-finals spot with a lead of a full point over Fabiano Caruana. On the way to the semis, Erigaisi had lost just one of his 19 games (to Jorden Van Foreest) while defeating the likes of Carlsen, Abdusattorov and Javokhir Sindarov and holding players like Alireza Firouzja, Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Daniil Dubov and Nihal Sarin to draws.

But in the semi-finals on Tuesday, Erigaisi lost two games in a row before accepting a draw in the third one against Abdusattorov to end with joint third place.

While Erigaisi had breezed into the semis, Carlsen took the bumpier route. In his 19 round robin games, his pieces toppled over before he was forfeited, he fumbled a queen before losing on time, he blundered a rook before resigning, and, for a change, showed plenty of his jangling nerves under time pressure. But at the end of it all, Carlsen still stood at the top of the podium.

A day after Carlsen had lost on time to Erigaisi after dropping his queen in a time scramble, Carlsen had another accident on the board which resulted in defeat for the world no 1 from Norway. Carlsen clattered over four pieces in another game where he was under significant duress on the clock against Armenian grandmaster Haik M Martirosyan. And before he had put back the pieces on their correct squares, he pressed his clock, which led to a protest from Martirosyan. Eventually, the arbiter handed a defeat by forfeit to Carlsen.

Arbiter Chris Bird informs Magnus Carlsen about the forfeit for pressing the clock before resetting pieces in the correct squares. (Photo: Screengrab via FIDE YouTube)

That defeat, Carlsen told FIDE in an interview later on, weighed heavy on his shoulders. “It was really tough (to move on from that defeat). But once I reached the knockout stages, the weight completely dropped off my shoulders. It felt a lot more manageable,” Carlsen shrugged.

This was Carlsen’s 20th World Championship title across formats, with the Norwegian having won five classical titles, six rapid gold medals, and nine gold medals (including the one he shared with Ian Nepomniachtchi last year) in blitz.