The opening ceremony of the 40th World Chess Olympiad will take place on August 27th, in Istanbul. Venue of the official start of the competition will be at WOW Convention centre at 09:30 PM local time.

The Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation. The 2010 Olympiad was held in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia and the first was held in Paris, France, in 1924, with 16 nations participating. The last Olympiad had 143 nations and 1294 competitors.