Magnus Carlsen won the Norway Chess title for the seventh time in his career, after a sensational fightback in the final round to draw against Arjun Erigaisi in the Classical game, which eventually put him out of reach of the likes of D Gukesh and Fabiano Caruana.
At the start of the final round, Gukesh was half a point behind Carlsen.
For 34 moves of Carlsen's game against Erigaisi, there was unease for the world no.1 and his home crowd in Stavanger. Arjun's tactical nous was showing and he had worked a clearly superior position for himself. Then in the space of six moves, Carlsen turned defence into attack, with his two knights and a rook hunting down Erigaisi's king. It was a stunning display of just coordinating pieces and using every single resource available to first save himself in the position, and then to give himself counter-play as well. Eventually though, Carlsen didn't quite find the right way to proceed for the win, and took the draw with three-fold repetition.
The title would've been decided through two Armageddon games had Gukesh drawn against Caruana in Classical as well. And that was so close to happening. Caruana was winning on mov e47, when he made a blunder with a pawn push. But on move 48, Gukesh made a blunder too. Instead of taking a bishop with his queen, he promoted his pawn for a queen, and eventually walked into a knight fork that would've seen him be down a piece in the endgame.
In the end, in fighting so hard for the title, Gukesh lost second spot too, as that was taken by Caruana.
Norway Chess 2025 Final Standings:
Magnus Carlsen - 16
Fabiano Caruana - 15.5
D Gukesh - 14.5
Hikaru Nakamura - 14
Arjun Erigaisi - 13
Wei Yi - 9.5
Meanwhile, in the women's section, Koneru Humpy just fell short in her bid to win the tournament, as she couldn't manage a win in classical against world champion Ju Wenjun. Anna Muzychuk won the women's title, even though she lost in Armageddon to R Vaishali in the final round.
Muzychuk and Vaishali played a rather tame game of classical chess, which petered out into an eventless draw rather early. The Ukrainian was in complete control of the Armageddon clash, but eventually made one blunder in the endgame, before eventually losing on time, as Vaishali ended her tournament on a positive note.
Humpy too won her last round match in the Armageddon, after a see-saw classical match against world champion Wenjun. Humpy managed to create a couple of openings for herself, but couldn't quite find the accuracy in her follow-ups to turn those openings into clear winning opportunities. Just like Gukesh, Humpy too finished third, as second spot was taken by China's Lei Tingjie.
Norway Chess Women's 2025 Final Standings:
Anna Muzychuk - 16.5
Lei Tingjie - 16
Koneru Humpy - 15
Ju Wenjun - 13.5
R Vaishali - 11
Sara Khadem - 9