It was recently confirmed that the World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, and his official title challenger, Fabiano Caruana, have both now signed the contract for their big match in London.
There were nagging doubts that the match might be taken to America instead, due to a wealthy sponsor being available and the fact that the challenger is American, but now tickets are on sale it does seem as if everything is going ahead as originally planned.
The match will run from 9-28 November 2018 and the venue will be The College in Holborn, Central London.
More details can be found on the official site, which provides a countdown to the start of play. Tickets can be purchased here and, of course, it will be possible to follow all of the action online.
Carlsen has been the champion since 2013, when he defeated Vishy Anand. Since then he has won two more title matches, against Anand (again) in 2014 and against Sergey Karjakin in 2016. The Karjakin match was particularly tough for Carlsen and ended 6-6 after the schedule 12 games. Carlsen managed to win through on the tiebreak games to retain his title.
This match will be contested over 12 games too (long gone are the days of 24-game matches) with tiebreak games to follow in the event of a 6-6 result.
Caruana has been on excellent form for some time and is a very determined character. He won the Berlin Candidates tournament earlier this year to earn his match with Carlsen. He is currently ranked second in the world (behind Carlsen) and it looks set to be an excellent match.
Interestingly, both players are currently in action at the Sinquefield Cup, which is part of the Grand Chess Tour and they will meet over the board in round 7 (to be played tomorrow, 25 August). The tournament pairings can be found here.
Incidentally, there will be more top-class chess action in London in December, which will see the finale of the Grand Chess Tour as part of the London Chess Classic, which is now open for business.