Turkmenistan is hosting a national chess tournament this month amid signs that efforts to develop young chess players are gaining momentum.
The Turkmenistan Chess Federation Cup runs from October 22 to November 1 in Ashgabat, featuring the disciplines of classical, rapid, and blitz chess. Young prospects and grandmasters are among those expected to participate.
Top performers will qualify for the 2027 Turkmenistan Premier League, while the strongest rapid and blitz players will earn the opportunity to represent Turkmenistan in international competitions, according to state media.
A powerhouse of Central Asian chess is Uzbekistan, whose open team, including Javokhir Sindarov and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, won gold at the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand in September. Kazakhstan´s women won silver at the Chess Olympiad, and the country’s juniors excelled at the just-completed World U7-U17 Championships in Roquetas de Mar, Spain.
FIDE, the global governing body of chess, noted Kazakhstan’s “outstanding medal haul across the age categories” at the event in Spain.
Turkmenistan, meanwhile, is working to develop chess at the grassroots level. State media reported this month that the qualifying rounds of the second league of the 2026 Turkmenistan Chess Championship had concluded in Ashgabat, Dashoguz, Turkmenabat, and Mary.
“The competition was held in parallel and attracted a record number of participants in the history of the tournament – 401 chess players,” said Turkmenistan: Golden Age, a state news site. It said the second league was established in 2023 to make it easier for people in more regions of the country to participate and advance to higher levels of competition.
The league’s player base of the competition has grown by 23 percent since it started several years ago, the news site reported, adding that most of the players are young children and teenagers.
Turkmenistan has produced a small number of grandmasters since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In 2025, it signed a memorandum to establish the Turkic Chess Association. Other signatories are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Türkiye, and Uzbekistan.
The goals of the association include strengthening ties among national chess federations, organizing major tournaments, and developing programs for children and youth, according to FIDE. It said signatory countries represent a region with about 170 million people and more than 100 grandmasters.
