2024 in chess

The Candidates Tournament 2024 and Women's Candidates Tournament 2024 will be held concurrently for the first time to determine the challengers for the World Chess Champion Ding Liren and Women's World Chess Champion Ju Wenjun. The winner of the Candidates Tournament will play Ding in the World Chess Championship 2024, while Ju will defend her title in 2025.

The World Championship runner-up will no longer get an automatic Candidates spot in the 2024–2026 cycle. Instead, he will be awarded bonus points in the 2024 FIDE Circuit, the winner of which will qualify of the Candidates Tournament 2026.

January

 * Jan 1 – 🇫🇷 Alireza Firouzja confirms his position above 🇺🇸 Wesley So in the January rating list and qualifies for the Candidates Tournament 2024.
 * Jan 5 – Adani Group announces a long term sponsorship agreement with 🇮🇳 R Praggnanandhaa.
 * Jan 9 – The President of India Droupadi Murmu confers the Arjuna Award on grandmaster-elect 🇮🇳 R Vaishali and the Dronacharya Award on grandmaster and coach 🇮🇳 RB Ramesh.
 * Jan 28 – 🇨🇳 Wei Yi wins the 2024 Tata Steel Masters after beating 🇮🇳 Gukesh D in the tiebreak final. 🇮🇳 Leon Luke Mendonca wins the Challengers' section, qualifying to next year's Masters.
 * Jan 30 – 13-year-old 🇺🇸 Andy Woodward earns his final grandmaster norm and becomes the youngest grandmaster in the world and the tenth youngest in history.

February

 * Feb 1 – After the results of Tata Steel, 🇳🇱 Anish Giri climbs to world number five while 🇨🇳 Wei Yi debuts in the world's top ten.
 * Feb 2 – FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich posthumously awards the honorary grandmaster title to the late Sultan Khan.
 * Feb 7 – 🇳🇴 Magnus Carlsen wins the Chessable Masters, the first leg of the Champions Chess Tour, after beating 🇫🇷 Alireza Firouzja in the Grand Final.
 * Feb 16 – 🇳🇴 Magnus Carlsen beats 🇺🇸 Fabiano Caruana in the final to win the inaugural Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge, the first major classical Fischer random chess tournament.
 * Feb 18 – 8-year-old Ashwath Kaushik becomes the youngest player in history to beat a grandmaster in classical chess.
 * Feb 25 – 🇧🇪 Daniel Dardha and 🇺🇸 Hans Niemann tie for first at the Djerba Masters, with Dardha taking first on tiebreaks.

March

 * Mar 2 – FIDE makes an urgent appeal to the Canadian government, urging them to expedite the visa process for several players ahead of the Candidates Tournament.
 * Mar 7 – FIDE confirms that all visas have been approved in time and the event will go ahead in Toronto as planned.
 * Mar 6-7 – 🇺🇿 Nodirbek Abdusattorov wins the Prague Masters with a round to spare. 🇹🇷 Ediz Gurel wins the Challengers' section and completes his third grandmaster norm.
 * Mar 7 – 🇨🇳 Bu Xiangzhi wins the Shenzhen Masters on tiebreaks, ahead of 🇨🇳 Yu Yangyi and 🇮🇳 Arjun Erigaisi.
 * Mar 15 – 🇳🇴 Magnus Carlsen and Jan Henric Buettner announce the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, a series of Fischer random chess tournaments that will run across five continents, starting with an event in India in November 2024.
 * Mar 18 – 🇪🇬 Bassem Amin wins the African Chess Championship. Jesse February wins the title in the women's section.
 * Mar 20-21 – 🇺🇸 Levon Aronian defeats 🇺🇸 Wesley So in the grand final to win the American Cup. 14-year-old 🇺🇸 Alice Lee beats 🇺🇸 Irina Krush in blitz playoffs to win the women's section.

Deaths

 * 28 March — Igors Rausis
 * 1 May — Juzefs Petkēvičs