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Vincent Keymer
Biography
Vincent Keymer was born on 15 November 2004 in Mainz into a family of professional musicians — his father Christof is a concert pianist and academic, his mother Heike an orchestral cellist — and took up chess at age five. He announced himself to the chess world in 2018, aged 13, by winning the Grenke Chess Open with 8/9, beating 49 grandmasters along the way, four of them rated above 2700, for a performance rating of 2798.
Keymer completed his third and final grandmaster norm at the FIDE Grand Swiss on the Isle of Man in October 2019, at age 14, and FIDE ratified the title in early 2020, making him the youngest German grandmaster in history. He soon became a Chess Olympiad mainstay on board 1 for Germany, playing at Chennai 2022 (6/8) and Budapest 2024 (5½/9), and reached the final of the 2022 World Rapid Chess Championship, finishing runner-up on 9½/10 after defeating Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi along the way. That same year he also won the Challengers section of the Prague Chess Festival on tiebreak over Hans Niemann.
His classical results kept climbing: he won the 2024 Rubinstein Memorial in Polanica-Zdrój, then took his first German Chess Championship and the 2025 Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters (7/9, with a round to spare) in 2025. In the unofficial Freestyle Chess Grand Slam at Weissenhaus he beat Magnus Carlsen in the semifinal and Fabiano Caruana in the final. He opened 2026 by finishing 5th (7½/13) at the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee, and now sits at world No. 6 as Germany's highest-rated player ever.
Key achievements
- Youngest German ever to earn the grandmaster title (norm Oct 2019, ratified early 2020, age 15)
- Won the 2018 Grenke Chess Open at age 13 with an 8/9 score and a 2798 performance rating
- Runner-up at the 2022 World Rapid Chess Championship, defeating Caruana and Nepomniachtchi
- Won the 2024 Rubinstein Memorial and the 2025 Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters
- Won his first German Chess Championship (2025); highest-rated German player in history
Ratings
| Date | Milestone | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 2019 | Third and final GM norm, FIDE Grand Swiss (age 14) | — |
| Early 2020 | Awarded the GM title — youngest German ever (age 15) | — |
| Nov 2025 | Career-high world ranking of No. 4 | — |
| Dec 2025 | All-time personal peak rating | 2776 |
| Sep 2026 | Current rating — world No. 6 | 2764 |
Titles
| Title | Years | Count |
|---|---|---|
| GM | Grandmaster, final norm Oct 2019, ratified early 2020 | — |
| German Ch. | German Chess Championship, 2025 — first national title | 1× |
Classical Tournaments
| Year | Tournament | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Grenke Chess Open | 1st |
| 2021 | FIDE Grand Swiss, Isle of Man | 5th |
| 2022 | Prague Chess Festival (Challengers) | 1st |
| 2024 | Rubinstein Memorial, Polanica-Zdrój | 1st |
| 2025 | German Chess Championship | 1st |
| 2025 | Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters | 1st |
| 2026 | Tata Steel Masters, Wijk aan Zee | 5th |
Team Events
| Year | Event (Board 1) | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Chess Olympiad, Chennai | 6/8 |
| 2024 | Chess Olympiad, Budapest | 5½/9 |
Source: OlimpBase (olimpbase.org) German team rosters, cross-checked with Wikipedia.
Read more on Wikipedia or view his FIDE profile.