thumb|[[Gukesh Dommaraju of India, the current world champion (2024)]]
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. The current world champion is Gukesh Dommaraju, who defeated the previous champion Ding Liren in the 2024 World Chess Championship.
The first event recognised as a world championship was the 1886 match between Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort. Steinitz won, making him the first world champion. From 1886 to 1946, the champion set the terms, requiring any challenger to raise a sizable stake and defeat the champion in a match in order to become the new champion. Following the death of reigning world champion Alexander Alekhine in 1946, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) took over administration of the World Championship, beginning with the 1948 tournament. From 1948 to 1993, FIDE organised a set of tournaments and matches to choose a new challenger for the world championship match, which was held every three years.
Before the 1993 match, then reigning champion Garry Kasparov and his championship rival Nigel Short broke away from FIDE, and conducted the match under the umbrella of the newly formed Professional Chess Association. FIDE conducted its own tournament, which was won by Anatoly Karpov, and led to a rival claimant to the title of World Champion for the next thirteen years until 2006. The titles were unified at the World Chess Championship 2006, and all the subsequent tournaments and matches have once again been administered by FIDE. Since the World Chess Championship 2014, the championship has settled on a two-year cycle, with championship matches conducted every even year.
Emanuel Lasker was the longest serving World Champion, having held the title for 27 years, and holds the record for the most Championship wins with six along with Kasparov and Karpov.
Though the world championship is open to all players, there are separate championships for women, under-20s and lower age groups, and seniors. There are also chess world championships in rapid, blitz, correspondence, problem solving, Fischer random chess and computer chess.
History
Early champions (pre-1886)
Before 1851
thumbnail|right|A depiction of the chess match between [[Howard Staunton and Pierre Saint-Amant, on 16 December 1843]]
The game of chess in its modern form emerged in Spain in the 15th century, though rule variations persisted until the late 19th century. Before Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort in the late 19th century, no chess player seriously claimed to be champion of the world. The phrase was used by some chess writers to describe other players of their day, and the status of being the best at the time has sometimes been awarded in retrospect, going back to the early 17th-century Italian player Gioachino Greco (the first player where complete games survive). Philidor wrote an extremely successful chess book (Analyse du jeu des Échecs) and gave public demonstrations of his blindfold chess skills. However, some of Philidor's contemporaries were not convinced by the analysis Philidor gave in his book (e.g. the Modenese Masters), and some more recent authors have echoed these doubts.