The inaugural edition will bring together eight grandmasters on January 19 and 20, 2027, in a rapid format of 10 minutes plus one second per move; Carlsen is the first confirmed participant, and the other seven names will be announced in the coming weeks. The competition will coincide with ICE Barcelona, the major global gaming-industry trade show held at Fira Gran Via in L’Hospitalet, and launches with €300,000 in prize money and an equivalent contribution to MOVE Foundation projects.
Yesterday, Tuesday the 20th, the MOVE Cup was presented to the press in the elegant, nineteenth-century-style rooms of Barcelona's Cotton House Hotel. The new competition aims to bring top-level international chess back to the city. EL LLOBREGAT, the driving force behind EL LLOBREGAT OPEN CHESS, was invited to the event, where Magnus Carlsen was the undisputed star and the first player confirmed for the tournament.
The presentation was hosted by Spanish grandmaster Miguel Illescas alongside Leonid Pertsovskiy, CEO and co-founder of BETBY, the company backing the competition. Tournament director David Aiza and Inese Dabola, a member of the MOVE Foundation's board of directors, also took part. The organizers announced plans extending beyond the inaugural edition: the intention is for Barcelona to host the MOVE Cup for three consecutive years, from 2027 to 2029, establishing it as a regular fixture on the international calendar. Among those attending the event, we also spotted Federico Marín Bellón, editor of Damas y Reyes, and Ramon Chalmeta, president of the Catalan Chess Federation, who followed the presentation of the new international tournament firsthand.
The competition itself will take place on January 19 and 20, 2027, although the program will begin on the 18th with a charity event. The sporting concept is designed to create an almost continuous showcase involving some of the world's best players: rapid chess, short games and constant tension, in a format intended not only for established fans but also for a wider audience that can enjoy chess as entertainment. The documentation presented by the organizers confirms that eight grandmasters will compete and that the seven players joining Carlsen will be revealed over the coming weeks.
The MOVE Cup aims to combine elite chess and entertainment: eight grandmasters, games of 10 minutes plus one second per move, and a structure designed to keep the excitement going right up to the final
Tournament director David Aiza explained that the first day will begin with a seven-round, all-play-all league stage. The top four players will advance to the knockout rounds: first against fourth and second against third. The semifinals will be best-of-three matches and the grand final will be best-of-five. If there is a tie, an Armageddon game will decide the result.
All games will be played with 10 minutes plus a one-second increment per move, a much more dynamic format than classical chess. Carlsen even took part in discussions about this time control. The Norwegian explained that one second is practically the amount of physical time needed to make a move and argued that two seconds would allow players to accumulate too much time on the clock. “One and a half seconds would probably be ideal,” he joked, although he maintained that the chosen 10+1 format would preserve the tension.
The experience will also be designed with spectators in mind. Attendees will be able to listen to live commentary through headphones while following scores and the tournament's progress on large screens. The competition will also be set up for online viewing. The exact venue for the games in Barcelona has not yet been announced, and the organizers plan to release ticketing and access details soon. The final evening will culminate in the championship match and trophy presentation ceremony.
Carlsen has helped shape the pace of play and believes the chosen format can work both for grandmasters and for spectators following the games
The financial scale will also be unusual. The MOVE Cup will offer a €300,000 prize fund for the players, but the same amount will go to the MOVE Foundation, giving the charitable side of the event the same initial financial weight as the sporting competition. In addition, any extra funds secured through new sponsors during the tournament will be split equally between the prize fund and the foundation.
The MOVE Foundation is a newly established initiative connected to the project, and the MOVE Cup will be its first major public event. Its goals focus on growing chess, supporting young talent and promoting research into the relationship between chess and mental health. The organization also wants to make the game more accessible to young people and communities that do not always enjoy the same opportunities.
Inese Dabola summed up this philosophy during the presentation. The intention, she explained, is to bring chessboards “into every home and onto the streets,” make chess a natural part of everyday life, and ensure that people from different backgrounds, generations and communities feel included and welcome. Dabola also said that the foundation wants to explore the mental-health dimension of chess and inspire new generations through role models such as Carlsen.
For every €300,000 initially allocated to prizes, another €300,000 will go to the MOVE Foundation's social initiatives, and additional contributions will be divided equally
Before the competition begins, a charity event linked to the foundation will take place on January 18. Some of the top players will join donors and supporters in games using the “hand and brain” format, a two-person team variant in which one partner decides what type of piece must be moved and the other chooses the particular piece and move to make.
The choice of dates is no coincidence. The MOVE Cup will take place alongside ICE Barcelona 2027, which will be held from January 18 to 20 at Fira Barcelona Gran Via in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. ICE bills itself as the place where the global gaming industry does business and is one of the sector's leading B2B trade shows. Over three days, it brings together companies involved in land-based and digital casinos, online gaming, lotteries, sports betting, payments, esports and technology, as well as regulatory bodies. The 2027 edition is part of World Gaming Week, scheduled for January 17–21, and organizers expect around 65,000 attendees.
The opening day of ICE and the MOVE Cup charity event will therefore both take place on January 18, while the official games will be held on the 19th and 20th, precisely the final two days of the trade show. This overlap allows the organizers to connect the tournament with an international audience already traveling to the Barcelona metropolitan area that week.
BETBY has a great deal to do with that connection. The company is a B2B technology provider specializing in sports-betting solutions, with sportsbook and esports products, artificial intelligence and tools for operators in the industry. The company, which includes Barcelona among its international hubs, develops both infrastructure for traditional sports betting and its own esports platform, Betby Games.
The MOVE Cup will take place during ICE Barcelona: the trade show will occupy Fira Gran Via in L’Hospitalet from January 18 to 20, and the tournament's official games will be played on January 19 and 20.
The MOVE Cup will take place during ICE Barcelona: the trade show will occupy Fira Gran Via in L’Hospitalet from January 18 to 20, and the tournament's official games will be played on January 19 and 20
BETBY's relationship with Magnus Carlsen did not begin with this tournament. The company named the Norwegian its global brand ambassador in October 2024 and has since made him a prominent figure in its international campaigns. Carlsen first appeared in Make Your Move and later Leaders Choose Leaders, campaigns linking strategy and decision-making in chess to the technology developed by the company.
That partnership had already brought chess to ICE Barcelona. In 2025, Carlsen appeared with BETBY at the trade show, and at ICE Barcelona 2026 the company went even further by bringing the Norwegian together with Hikaru Nakamura and Levy Rozman, known as GothamChess, for a major chess-themed activation. The initiative included exhibition games and drew considerable attention at the event. Leonid Pertsovskiy himself explained during the presentation that the success of that experience prompted the idea of “something bigger and more ambitious.”
The MOVE Cup now marks the leap from those exhibitions associated with a major industry trade show to an international tournament with its own identity and calendar. “Chess is a game of clear thinking, analysis, patience and resilience,” Pertsovskiy said. The stated ambition is to turn the new competition into a recurring fixture on the world calendar.
BETBY has been associated with Carlsen since 2024 and has already used ICE Barcelona as the setting for major chess exhibitions; the MOVE Cup now turns that relationship into an independent tournament
For Carlsen, one of the main attractions lies precisely in offering something different. “I think we're lacking events that bring chess closer to the public, provide a better spectator experience and are more exciting,” he explained. His idea is to bring together top-level players in a setting that preserves sporting merit while making the competition more immediately accessible to audiences.
The Norwegian linked this evolution to the growth of esports and major international video-game productions. He acknowledged that it is hard not to feel inspired by events such as the Esports World Cup, where competition is combined with huge audiences, sophisticated broadcasts and a presentation designed as a spectacle. His view is that chess can learn from those formats without losing its essence.
Carlsen knows that convergence well. Chess has become part of the Esports World Cup, while BETBY has also strengthened its commitment to the game within its esports and betting products. For the Norwegian champion, the MOVE Cup's aim is not to transform chess itself but to make great games appealing even to people who do not normally follow traditional tournaments.
Esports are also a point of reference: Carlsen believes chess can learn from their major productions to attract new audiences without compromising top-level competition
Fitting the event into the calendar will, however, have consequences. The chosen dates overlap with the period of Tata Steel Chess, one of the circuit's most prestigious classical tournaments, with which Carlsen has a long history. The Norwegian explained that the decision does not amount to rejecting that event, but argued that international chess needs greater coordination among organizers to avoid excessive fragmentation of the calendar.
The presence of the world number one is the main selling point of a competition aiming to restore Barcelona's tradition of hosting major chess tournaments. As speakers recalled during the presentation, the Catalan capital has not hosted a comparable elite event since 1989, when Garry Kasparov played in the Barcelona tournament. The promoters believe there is room for the city to regain a prominent place in international chess.
Miguel Illescas, one of the hosts of the presentation, also recalled his own encounters with great champions. The Spanish grandmaster has faced eight world champions and explained that he drew against Carlsen when the Norwegian was still very young. “You have to play these geniuses when they're very young, because then they grow up and things get a little harder,” he joked.
Barcelona wants to regain its place among the great cities of international chess, with a competition that organizers intend to stage in 2027, 2028 and 2029
Carlsen himself recalled another visit to Barcelona when his approach to competition was rather less disciplined. In 2023, he played several games in an online event while staying in the city, an experience he laughingly described as a “really bad idea” because he spent much of that time partying and his performance was far from what he had hoped. This time, he assured the audience, the circumstances would be very different.
There was also time to revisit a question that regularly follows the Norwegian: whether he will ever return to compete for the classical World Championship, a title he declined to defend after dominating the world championship cycle. Asked what would have to happen for him to change his mind, Carlsen replied ironically that “most people have a price,” although he made clear that, from a sporting perspective, he is currently much more interested in other formats than in undertaking another extremely long classical match.
That interest goes a long way toward explaining the MOVE Cup's philosophy. Carlsen has spent years exploring rapid competitions, Chess960, knockout formats and experiences close to esports. Barcelona will now host another experiment: eight of the world's best players, rapid games, short knockout rounds, audience-focused production and a social component intended to grow alongside the competition.
The organizers still have to reveal the other seven grandmasters, announce the final venue and put tickets on sale. But the first piece, and the hardest to secure for a brand-new tournament, is already in place: Magnus Carlsen will return to Barcelona in January, this time to sit at the board in a competition expressly conceived for him and seven other members of the world elite.
And the ambition is not to let this be a one-off occasion. Following Tuesday's launch at the Cotton House, the stated intention is for 2027 to be only the beginning and for Barcelona to retain the MOVE Cup at least through 2029. The combination of Carlsen, a substantial prize fund, the international showcase provided by ICE Barcelona and the MOVE Foundation's social mission is intended to create what the organizers repeatedly emphasized during the presentation: not just another tournament, but an event capable of bringing top-level chess to a much wider audience.
