Praggnanandhaa placed in third tier of Candidates 2026 competitors by French GM Vachier-Lagrave: 'His form has...'

French Grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave isn't counting R Praggnanandhaa among the top favourites for the upcoming FIDE Candidates Tournament, placing the Indian in the 'third tier' while ranking players based on their chances of winning the prestigious event.

Praggnanandhaa is the lone Indian competing in the 'Open' section of the tournament, which takes place in Cyprus from 28 March to 16 April. And while the 2025 Tata Steel Chess champion has not had a great run in recent months, there are those – including Indian legend Viswanathan Anand – who believe the 20-year-old could roar back to form at the Candidates.

In his analysis of the eight competitors at the 2026 Candidates on the Chess with Mustreader podcast, Vachier-Lagrave has prepared a tier-list in which Tier S happens to be the top category followed by Tier A, B and C.

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The 35-year-old has given world No 3 Fabiano Caruana the top billing, picking the Italian-American as the lone player in the S-tier. World No 2 Hikaru Nakamura has been placed in Tier A alongside Wei Yi and Anish Giri despite being ranked higher than Caruana on the FIDE Classical ratings.

MVL explains 'hot take' on Pragg

Praggnanandhaa, meanwhile, has been slotted in Tier B alongside Uzbekistani GM Javokhir Sindarov. And according Vachier-Lagrave, the reason behind for his "hot take" on Pragg is his performance in recent months, adding that he would have been in the S-tier had the list been made in the first half of 2025.

"It’s harsh because you know that skill-wise, if we were in the first six or eight months of 2025 right now, Pragg would have been at S tier. Praggnanandhaa had a great year in 2025, but I think from the FIDE Grand Swiss onwards, things started to get out of hand a bit. He had a tough Grand Swiss, tough FIDE World Cup, tough Grand Chess Tour Finals as well," Vachier-Lagrave said in the episode.

"It’s a hot take but it’s been 6 months and his form has really not been great. It can happen but you know I’m also taking into account the fact that he’s only 20 years old. You know it does take something special to break out of this spiral. It could just be about the first games if he feels well if he wins a couple of them.

"But you could see for instance the most likely outcome is that out of four games he makes two points out of four. I don’t see Praggnanandhaa winning the Candidates if he has two out of four. But I could see some other players like Fabi (Caruana) winning the Candidates if he’s on two out of four. ," he added.

Caruana and Nakamura have kept themselves busy in the build-up to the Candidates. While Caruana had participated at the Saint Louis Masters and the American Cup, Nakamura had recently played a series of training games against fellow American Grandmaster Awonder Liang. 

Praggnanandhaa, meanwhile, has opted for a break following his disastrous Tata Steel Chess campaign, in which he finished 11th out of 14 players after entering the tournament as the defending champion, hoping the breather helps him regain his old form and keep the dream of an all-Indian World Championship showdown against D Gukesh alive.