Viswanathan Anand has won the World Chess Championship five times, earned the respect of grandmasters on every continent, and spent decades at the summit of a sport that rewards patience, precision, and deep strategic thinking. So when he says Australia is on the verge of something significant, it is worth paying attention.
The Indian chess legend visited Sydney this week as part of his role as vice president of FIDE, the sport's global governing body, and came away genuinely impressed by what he found, particularly in the country's classrooms.
"We had the Netflix, Queen's Gambit and pandemic boom, and there is another boom happening in Australia, which is chess in schools," Anand told ABC Sport during the visit. "I was kind of prepared for the fact that more people would be following chess on their phones, but I was amazed to see the chess in schools scene that is happening here. Generally, Australia hasn't been a chess country, but I think that's about to change."
The numbers provide some context for his optimism. Since FIDE began awarding grandmaster titles in 1950, more than 2,000 players worldwide have earned the distinction. Australia has produced just 10 grandmasters in that time, with Ian Rogers becoming the first in 1985. By the standards of traditional chess powerhouses in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, that is a modest tally. But Anand believes the grassroots momentum he witnessed in Sydney points to a different trajectory ahead.
"There are very, very passionate communities. Youngsters are doing it, and getting their elders to follow the game a bit," he said. "I think this could be a very promising moment for Australian chess."
Part of Anand's pitch for Australian chess involves a competition he has a personal stake in: the Global Chess League. Launched in 2023 as a joint venture between FIDE and Indian technology company Tech Mahindra, the franchise-based tournament has completed three seasons and drawn direct comparisons to cricket's Indian Premier League in its ambition to package elite chess for a broader television audience. Anand himself has played as lead for the Ganges Grandmasters in all three seasons.
"Everything has been redesigned to make it packageable for television," Anand said. "Chess has done well on the internet, but the key is to reach out to new audiences that don't naturally encounter chess. I would say both in India and Australia, there is a culture of being open to these new formats and presentations."
Previous hosts of the Global Chess League have included Dubai, London, and Mumbai. After touring the Sydney Cricket Ground during his visit, Anand suggested the iconic venue could be a compelling future host. "Most venues want to host multiple different games, to show they are not restricted to one sport," he said. "We have the pleasure of visiting the Sydney Cricket Ground and we are hopeful we can find some area of collaboration there."
Tech Mahindra's chief people officer, Harshvendra Soin, was equally enthusiastic. "I already have an imagination," he told ABC Sport. "In the middle of the SCG, you have the finals of the Global Chess League."
The prospect raises legitimate questions about how chess fits within Australia's crowded sports and events calendar. Major venues like the SCG have commercial pressures and established programming commitments. Whether the Global Chess League can attract the broadcast deals and sponsorship revenues needed to make an Australian leg financially viable remains to be demonstrated rather than assumed. Chess, for all its recent growth online, is still building the kind of live audience figures that venue operators and commercial partners require.
That said, dismissing the idea entirely would ignore some genuine shifts in the sport's profile. The 2020 Netflix series The Queen's Gambit drove a documented surge in chess participation globally, and Chess.com reported tens of millions of new registrations in the years that followed. If school programmes are successfully converting that digital curiosity into sustained, competitive participation, Australia may genuinely be building a foundation that did not exist a decade ago.
The ambition Anand and his colleagues are describing, chess finals at the SCG, a new generation of Australian grandmasters, a franchise league rivalling the IPL in its reach, is bold by any measure. The distance between aspiration and outcome in sports development is rarely short. But the underlying observation, that Australian chess is growing from the ground up, in schools rather than just online - carries the ring of something real. Whether the institutions and investment follow is the more interesting question, and one that Anand's visit alone cannot answer.