Trailer out for the six-episode series CANDIDATES that followed India’s chess prodigies for two and a half years, from a heartbreaking Olympiad blunder to the world title
Premieres free on YouTube on 22 November, coinciding with the opening ceremony of Gukesh’s World Championship defence in Geneva.
MUMBAI, 13 November 2026: Dopamine Media & Entertainment today released the official trailer for CANDIDATES, a six-episode series about a generation of Indian chess prodigies: D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa, R Vaishali, Arjun Erigaisi and Vidit Gujrathi. Filmed between June 2022 and December 2024, the series follows them from a heartbreaking blunder at the 2022 Chess Olympiad in Chennai to the moment Gukesh, at 18, became the youngest-ever undisputed World Chess Champion.
Directed by Prashant Raj and Abhineet Chute, CANDIDATES premieres on Dopamine Media’s YouTube channel on Sunday, 22 November, the day the 2026 World Championship opening ceremony kicks off in Geneva, where Gukesh defends his title. The series runs alongside the match and concludes with a two-episode finale on 9 December, two days before Game 14.
The Story
In 2013, a seven-year-old boy sat in the stands in Chennai and watched Viswanathan Anand lose the world title. He vowed to win it back. CANDIDATES follows him and four other prodigies who set out to bring the crown home: Gukesh, the king of comebacks; Praggnanandhaa, the people’s hero; his sister Vaishali, the shadow fighter; Arjun, the mad man; and Vidit, the resurgent.
Along the way come losing streaks and comebacks, friendships tested across the board, near-misses that hurt for years, and families who rearrange their lives around a chessboard.
Most sports documentaries look back at how champions were made. CANDIDATES was filmed as it happened. Shot vérité-style across eight countries and territories and 14 cities, its crew was there for Gukesh’s Olympiad blunder, for his unfiltered reaction to becoming World Champion, and inside the players’ homes in between. Nothing is staged, scripted or recreated.
What they said
“Chess looks like the quietest sport in the world. Spend time with these players and you realise how loud it is inside their heads. Every loss is personal. You don’t need to know the rules to feel this one,” said Biswa Kalyan Rath, co-creator and producer on the series.
“We started filming in 2022 without knowing how this story would end. We only knew these players were special and that someone needed to be in the room. We are releasing CANDIDATES on YouTube because that is where India’s new chess audience grew up, and it should be free for all of them,” said Prashant Raj, co-creator and director of CANDIDATES.
“We all saw the crown. And it was the Candidates team that was there for the blunder, the losing streaks and the long nights before the wins. Every champion was once a candidate, and that is the universally heart-tugging story we wanted to tell,” said Anu Singh, producer.
Release schedule
All episodes premiere on the Dopamine Media YouTube channel at 7PM IST:
Episode 1: Sunday, 22 November
Episode 2: Friday, 27 November
Episode 3: Tuesday, 1 December
Episode 4: Saturday, 5 December
Episodes 5 & 6 (finale): Wednesday, 9 December, back to back, one hour apart
The Team
CANDIDATES is created by Biswa Kalyan Rath and Prashant Raj, directed by Prashant Raj and produced by Anu Singh, Prashant Raj and Biswa Kalyan Rath for Dopamine Media & Entertainment, in association with Chessbase India and with archival support from the International Chess Federation (FIDE). Cinematography and episode direction are by Abhineet Chute, with Ajay Mehta as associate director. The series is edited by Khushboo Raj Agarwal (series editor) and Aniruddh Ramjiwal (episode editor). The background score is by Daniel B. George and Harsh Upadhyay, sound design is by Manik Batra and graphics by Mihir Lele.
CANDIDATES is independently produced and released and will be distributed across multiple platforms across the world apart from YouTube post the World Championship match.
About Biswa Kalyan Rath
Biswa Kalyan Rath is a stand-up comedian, writer and creator, and the co-creator and producer of CANDIDATES. An IIT Kharagpur graduate, he left a software job in 2014 to do comedy full time, and first drew a national audience with Pretentious Movie Reviews, the viral YouTube series he made with Kanan Gill. He has three stand-up specials on Amazon Prime Video: Biswa Mast Aadmi (2017), Sushi (2019) and Mood Kharaab (2023). He also created and wrote the Amazon Original series Laakhon Mein Ek (2017–2019). He was a judge on Prime Video’s Comicstaan (Seasons 1 and 2) and appeared in Netflix’s Alma Matters: Inside the IIT Dream. CANDIDATES is his first docu-series as creator and producer.
About Prashant Raj
Prashant Raj is the co-creator and director of CANDIDATES. A former Managing Partner at The Viral Fever (TVF), one of the new-age media companies that took Indian web series to YouTube early on, his work includes the Netflix docu-series Alma Matters: Inside the IIT Dream and the upcoming Prime Video series Tax Department Story.
About Anu Singh
Anu Singh (Choudhary) is an award-winning screenwriter, author and former journalist, and the co-founder of Dopamine Media & Entertainment. Her screenwriting credits include all seasons of Aarya, Grahan, Scoop, Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video, Delhi Crime Season 3, Mrs. and Phoolan. Her screenwriting has been recognised with an International Emmy nomination, a Filmfare award for Best Screenplay and an SWA award. As a journalist, she won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award and the Laadli Media Award. A bilingual author, her books include Neela Scarf, Mamma Ki Diary and I, Shivani: The Goddess Who Chose. She has served as a juror for the Sir Peter Ustinov Screenwriting Awards at the International Emmys in 2022 and 2023.
About Dopamine Media & Entertainment
Dopamine Media & Entertainment is a Mumbai-based content studio co-founded by Anu Singh and Prashant Raj. It creates fiction and non-fiction series and films, branded content and storytelling-led learning programmes. CANDIDATES is its second long-form docu-series.
