Africa

Buettner said he was particularly happy to be in Africa: “I know that the African population, at least the people who follow chess, are extremely happy to have such a tournament here with Magnus and all the other great players. We have eight top players. It’s fantastic, and we’re very grateful and excited to start this tournament.”

As it turns out, it’s not the first time for Carlsen in South Africa. “I was here in 1999, I think around November, and I hadn’t really started playing a lot of chess back then,” he said, speaking about a time when he was nine years old. “It was a different time — a family vacation. My father’s sister and her family lived here, so we went to visit them. We saw a lot of the country: Johannesburg, where they were living, Kruger Park, the Drakensberg Mountains, the Garden Route, and all the way to Cape Town. I’ve always wanted to come back, but it hasn’t panned out. So, I’m very happy to finally be back in this beautiful country. People keep telling me the city has changed, and what can I say — it’s still beautiful!”

Freestyle Chess

Carlsen still feels as excited about Freestyle Chess as ever, saying: “I’m very grateful to Jan and his team for believing in Freestyle and making it all come to life. I truly believe that when it comes to longer chess, this is as good as it gets — it’s just creativity and fight from the get-go.”

Büttner once again used the analogy with Formula 1 to make clear the general ideas behind Freestyle. “We are trying to bring chess to the non-chess player, similar like Formula 1 is bringing the motorsport to the non-racecar driver,” he said. “Our intention is always try to make a show out of it and to really put [forward] the characters and the personal drama of the players and everything.”

Australia

Buettner also revealed that there are talks with a new continent: that of Australia. “We actually have an invitation from the Grand Slam in Melbourne to do the crossover like we did in Las Vegas with all the great basketball players,” he explained. “We are doing the same at some point with the great tennis players, you know, like Andy Murray, like all these great tennis players. They’re all interested in chess. It didn’t work out with our schedule to go to Australia; it would have been in January, and so maybe we’ll do it in 2027.”

Time control

Another topic during the press conference was the time control, which started with classical in early 2024 but has evolved to a faster rate of play. “In terms of trying to really make the sports more mass market consumable, this is why we are shortening the time period,” said Buettner. “Now, with a shorter time period we can do the quarterfinal, the semi-final and the final each in one day. And we have a round robin before, for the 12 players in two groups, six and six, and four advance from each. So that’s a very simple system everybody can understand it.”

Carlsen pointed out that, over the course of almost two years, the top players have become better at Freestyle Chess, which allows for faster time controls now: “On a personal note, I feel that the time control that we have now works out well. There’s enough time to explore, to get the essence and that’s all that I, as a player, really wanted from this format.”

Financial viability

Asked about the financial viability of the whole project, Buettner was open and frank. He said that sponsors are embracing the endeavor, but “not as fast as I hoped in the beginning.” At the same time, he continues to be optimistic, noting that there is clear interest from e.g. the crypto and finance industries, but also from big cities who are hoping to showcase their city with one of the future events. Büttner: “Our goal is next year to become event-level profitable and then the overall profitability should be in 2027. That’s our current plan.”

The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Finals will take place December 8-11, 2025, in Grootbos, South Africa. The participants are Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Fabiano Caruana (United States), Vincent Keymer (Germany), Arjun Erigaisi (India), Levon Aronian (United States), Hans Niemann (United States), Parham Maghsoodloo (Iran), and Javokhir Sindarov (Uzbekistan).

Buettner: “We’ve been lucky. For example, Hikaru Nakamura, one of the top eight, couldn’t attend because his wife is giving birth. We replaced him with Javokhir Sindarov, and later on, he won the World Cup! Similarly, Arjun Erigaisi, who is arriving today, just won the Jerusalem Masters. We’ve been lucky in our selections and with the qualification events.”