The Argentinian looks set to break the record for the youngest GM after winning the Legends and Prodigies tournament in Madrid
Faustino Oro, the 11-year-old “chess Messi” from Argentina, set new world records for his age when he won last week’s Legends and Prodigies tournament in Madrid with an unbeaten 7.5/9, achieving his first grandmaster norm (of three needed for the title) with 1.5 points to spare, plus a 2509 GM rating on Fide’s October rating list.
Oro is the first under-12 in chess history to be rated 2500-plus. His next target will be his second and third GM norms, and with them Abhimanyu Mishra’s world record as the youngest ever GM, within the next four months or so. He already has the World Cup in Goa, the European Club Cup in Greece, and a closed tournament in Argentina lined up.
Mishra had made heavy weather of it in 2021, needing five tournaments in the US and eight in Budapest before he broke Sergey Karjakin’s 2002 record, and this brought significant norm factory criticism. However, that all changed last month when Mishra, now 16, proved himself the real deal by almost qualifying for the 2026 Candidates at the Grand Swiss in Samarkand.
Karjakin drew 6-6 with Magnus Carlsen in the 2016 world title match before losing the rapid tie-break, while Gukesh Dommaraju, the second youngest on the all-time GM list, is the reigning world champion. Hence the portents for Oro’s eventual status in the chess pantheon are bright.
