Levon Aronian among top chess prizewinners in 2025

GM Magnus Carlsen may have given up the world championship years ago, but he is still the best player in the world, Chess.com.

He proved it in several ways in 2025, not the least of which was a bank account that continued to swell. A quarter-million here, another hundred K there, and in the end, Carlsen won almost $1.5 million worth of prizes last year from his tournament performances alone. But he wasn't the only player to earn some cash from his chess in 2025, even if just two players won even half as much prize money this year. 

While Carlsen was the only player to earn seven figures in prize winnings this year, it was also a good year for players from the United States, as GMs Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, and Hikaru Nakamura took the next three spots. Caruana won the Grand Chess Tour Finals, did well in several other events, and accumulated nearly $900,000 in prizes; Aronian won two Freestyle Grand Slam events for over half of his more than $750,000 in winnings, in what was his best year in the four years we've done this series; and Nakamura was successful in the Freestyle Grand Slam and Esports World Cup while also winning the Comet Open for a total of nearly $600,000.

In a virtual tie for fifth place, GMs Alireza Firouzja and Vincent Keymer both won a hair over $450,000. Rounding out the top 10 were GMs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Arjun Erigaisi, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and World Cup winner Javokhir Sindarov.