Arjun Erigaisi achieves career-best rating, aims to qualify for FIDE Candidates 2026

Arjun Erigaisi broke into the top five of FIDE live ratings last week, and is trailing only Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.

Arjun is currently the World No. 4 and the No. 1 Indian chess player with 2773.9 ratings.

Despite, his illustrious achievement the grandmaster has been devoid of appearing in the invite-only elite tournaments.

Arjun has been on a continuous grind playing the open tournaments, scoring 7.5/9 in the recently concluded Menorca Open.

The Indian grandmaster acknowledged the risk of playing in the open tournaments as a draw or a loss to a lower-rank competitor severely affects the rating points.

“But it can also pay off. I would say it has paid off for me. It is best to be part of closed events, but given the circumstances, playing open was the way ahead for me,” he told the Indian Express.

Previously, Arjun had narrowly missed out on an opportunity for the FIDE Candidates 2024 to D Gukesh. He is now leaving no stone unturned for the next FIDE Candidates 2026 as he is leading the current FIDE Circuit.

"Earlier, I used to care about my ratings and rankings. It used to affect me negatively. Maybe if I had cared less, there was a good chance I would have made it to the Candidates," added Arjun.

However, Arjun has moved his whole focus to qualify for the next Candidates.

Currently, Arjun is competing in the Stepan Avagyan Memorial in Armenia which has just begun with Arjun winning round 1 with the white pieces against Robert Hovhannisyan of Armenia.