In this video Sagar Shah provides a detailed, on‑site tour of the Chess Olympiad 2026 venue in Samarkand, walking viewers through the Expo Center, playing hall, and surrounding facilities. He points out the press‑conference area with a life‑size chessboard, the booths of the two FIDE presidential candidates (Vadim Rosenstein/WR Chess and Timur Turlov with Vishy Anand as deputy), and the media centre where global journalists will work. The FIDE Lounge, set up for ChessBase India’s live commentary, is shown alongside the DGT shop, a ChessBase shop announcing the first Mac release (Nov 2026), and a merch café area. Shah then moves to the broadcast hub, describing the extensive multi‑camera system covering the four team boards, the arbiter and captain seating, and the large screen displays that replace traditional score sheets. He highlights the presence of national flags, streaming rooms that can be rented, and the overall layout that keeps all teams under one roof. Nearby official hotels – Hotel Minion (Indian team), Sawinski Plaza, and Hilton – are mentioned, as is the broader Silk Road Samarkand complex. Throughout, Shah’s narration is enthusiastic, emphasizing the venue’s scale, modern technology, and the vibrant atmosphere of the upcoming Olympiad.
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Hi everyone, this is Sagar Shah in Samarkand before the Chess Olympiad 2026, and I'm going to give you a complete tour of this venue. Right now, I'm right outside the playing venue. You can see that over there is the playing hall, and this is the Expo Center here. Let's enter the Expo Center and then go to the playing venue. But right opposite the playing venue is this hotel. And that is Hotel Minion. This is the hotel in which the Indian players are staying, and let's head in now. Look at this beautiful design here. And when you enter the Expo Center, the door is very beautiful. Now going in. So the Expo Center has many interesting things. Hello! And look at Look at this, it's big and it's beautiful. This is the place where the press conference took place, and it's a very beautiful place. Look at this, this is a chessboard here with life-size pieces and a very nice setup for the press conference. Now you can see here, this is the place where Vadim has set up his booth. He's going to fight for the FIDE presidency, and it's not the only one. Even here, the other side has his booth, Vadim Rosenstein, WR Chess. And this is a very nicely created booth here. And on this side is Timur Turlov. Who is the other presidential candidate for FIDE, FIDE presidency? And you can see here, this is his booth along with Vishy Anand, who is going to be his deputy president. And this seems to be the place where people can come and meet each other. Seems to be the media center. This is the media center, and this is where the media from all across the world will sit here and do their work. Very beautiful room. And you can also see that they have a small little auditorium-like look. And here we have the FIDE Lounge, and inside the FIDE Lounge here is where we will be having our commentary. This is the place in which ChessBase India will be doing their commentary. So this is a very cool place. I'm just testing out a few things. So this is our setup. It's a table, we have here a board, and there will be a television. And I think we'll be sitting this way with our back against here. And this is the FIDE Lounge. Now, moving opposite the FIDE Lounge is The DGT shop. Look at this very interesting DGT shop here with different pieces. And then we have the ChessBase shop here with a very big announcement that ChessBase has made, which is ChessBase is finally on Mac. Official release November 2026. And by the way, look at the different clocks that DGT has, the different chess sets here. It's very nice. Moving from this side, you will see that there's a space for people to just sit here with a big screen, and then there are all these cafeterias, restaurants, or you can say cafes where you can eat something if you are hungry. And there's also a merch shop here which is a very nice merch shop with many different things related to chess and some things which are not very related to chess. It's a very nice merch shop. Okay, moving in here, there's also a Leap Chess timer. They have wooden chess sets, clocks, and many different things. So very cool one. And now I'll go to the left where there is a broadcast room, broadcast office, and here is where The entire broadcast happens for this event. And look at this spectacular venue!
Ooh!
Just incredible. And as we go in here, you will see that the entire tournament is actually placed in one room itself here. So these are the 4 boards on any match, and then the results are not in the traditional board format, but they have So many television screens. So that's an incredible thing that they have introduced here. I saw it in Hong Kong, but here the scale is at altogether different level. Now you can see the chairs for the arbiter and the captains, and this is truly An incredible sight! I mean, for any chess lover, this is just mind-boggling. Wow! And you can see in the distance are all the flags of the different countries here. And now we move to the top boards as we come here. So they have one camera here to show this entire board, then one camera here to show the entire board here, and then here as well, and then the next board. And as we move to the top boards You can see that they have now 2 cameras on each board. So here you can see one— there are these 2 cameras which are the marshal cams, and then there's also the little face cam that they have placed, and on all the boards. So such boards are 3 2 in men, I mean open, and 1 in women. So you can see that this camera covers board 1 and 2, and this camera covers board 3 and 4. Well, I think in few of the events that we looked at, they had, like in India, they had 2 boards separated so that there could be individual cams on each boat, but here they've kept it together to kind of show the team spirit together. And so this is the playing venue, and there's also stuff happening behind the playing venue. So you can see that there are— there's this FIDE logo, Everything is very beautifully done here, and you can see an exit here. So if you go in this direction, you will see different rooms that are there for streaming, and I think These rooms are given to different streams, I believe, or I— I'm not sure who will have these rooms. RMG. So you can actually, I think, rent a room here. So there are many of them. For example, let's say this one. Ah, it's closed maybe. So there are these little rooms that are there, and some of the broadcasts could very well happen from here. So this is in the background, and this area goes all the way this way, and there are more rooms on that side. And going here. Well, I think this entire playing hall has such an amazing vibe. Like, to have all the players in one— under one roof is so difficult, right? You need such a big room, and they've managed to do that. So that's amazing. And from here, the final bit is the players will arrive from here with the security setup entirely on this side and On the other side, you get outside. So this—it's now dark in the night. Right now, there's some work going on.
Oh, this is beautiful!
And you can see it's quite late in the night right now, and this is the Silk Road by Samarkand. And what I'll do now is show you a bit of the glimpse, a few minutes that I shot of being inside these premises. It's kind of a gated community, you can say, or a gated section whereby when you enter in, then you see all these buildings. And so I've actually, uh, made a video which I will play here. I hope you enjoyed this, uh, video and this little tour of the venue. For now, Sagar Shah signing off. Bye-bye. Sawinski Plaza. One of the official hotels. I think many top teams are staying here.
This is the place where the technical meeting is going to happen.
And this, dear friends, was a small tour of the Silk Road Samarkand where we are going to have our Olympiad.
Let's go!
Okay, our journey continues now from the Hilton. We are now going to the Expo Center. Let's go.
