What is Magnus Carlsen’s IQ?
No IQ test result is public. The 190 has no source; his FIDE rating history does.
Magnus Carlsen’s IQ has never been published: no test result is on record, and the 190 attached to his name has no source. This site’s estimated IQ level for him is 145–160, inferred from a chess record that includes a peak FIDE rating of 2882 and a No. 1 ranking held since July 2011 (2823 as of October 2026).
Magnus Carlsen’s estimated IQ
- Grandmaster at 13 years, 4 months and 27 days: he completed his third grandmaster norm at the Dubai Open in April 2004, the second-youngest grandmaster in history at the time, and FIDE lists the title as 2004.
- FIDE’s lists record the rise: No. 1 for the first time in January 2010 (2810, aged 19) and No. 1 on every list since July 2011. His peak of 2882 (May 2014, equaled in August 2019) is the highest FIDE rating on record, and as of October 2026 he is rated 2823 classical, 2801 rapid and 2860 blitz.
- World Chess Champion from November 2013 to 2023, the first player to hold the classical, rapid and blitz world titles at once (2014), and holder of the longest unbeaten streak in elite classical chess: 125 games, from July 31, 2018 to October 10, 2020.
- An Elo rating is a published, continuously updated record of results against other rated players. It is strong evidence of chess strength and says nothing directly about reasoning on other tasks.
The range is an inference from a performance record, not a measurement: an Elo rating compares chess results with other rated players and does not convert into an IQ. The only first-hand remark on IQ on record is a March 2010 Der Spiegel answer, “I have no idea,” which does not say whether he was ever tested.
- Born
- November 30, 1990, Tønsberg, Norway
- Field
- Chess; grandmaster since 2004
- Peak rating
- 2882 FIDE (May 2014, equaled August 2019), the highest on record
- Rating, October 2026
- 2823 classical, 2801 rapid, 2860 blitz; world No. 1 (FIDE)
- World Chess Champion
- 2013–2023; announced July 20, 2022 that he would not defend
- Unbeaten streak
- 125 classical games, July 31, 2018 to October 10, 2020
- Nationality
- Norwegian
- On record about IQ
- “I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to know it anyway.” (Der Spiegel, March 2010)
What an IQ of 145–160 actually means
Set the claim aside for a moment. If someone genuinely scored in this range, here is what that would represent.
Average is 100 by construction, and about two-thirds of people fall between 85 and 115. Take the test to place your own score on this scale.
| Score range | Classification | Share of people | What it indicates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 85 – 114 | Average | ~68% | The range most people fall into. |
| 115 – 129 | Above average | ~13.6% | Roughly one person in seven. |
| 130 – 144 | Gifted | ~2% | The threshold most high-IQ societies use. |
| Above 144 | Highly gifted | ~0.1% | Figures above this range are extrapolated from the curve rather than measured. |
Percentages are approximate and describe a normal distribution. The same number means different things on tests with different standard deviations.
Thirty questions gives you a measured position on this exact scale — your score, your percentile and the ability breakdown behind it.
Find out in 30 minutes →Who Magnus Carlsen is
Magnus Carlsen, a Norwegian chess grandmaster born in Tønsberg on November 30, 1990, is the player people mean when they search “magnus carlson iq”: the name is spelled Carlsen. Wikipedia describes an attacking player in his teens who became a universal one, varying his openings so that opponents find it harder to prepare against him. That breadth, and a rating no other player has matched, is what invites the IQ question.
How to read the numbers. On the usual scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15), 190 is 6.0 standard deviations above the mean, about 1 in a billion by the normal curve (our arithmetic); a result that rare would need a verified test behind it, and none is published. This site’s range of 145–160 is 3.0 to 4.0 standard deviations, about 1 in 741 to 1 in 31,574, the territory of an IQ of 145 to an IQ of 160; how rare a high IQ score is explains the arithmetic.
Several other chess players are profiled here: Bobby Fischer is estimated at 160–180, Viswanathan Anand and Hikaru Nakamura at 140–155, Garry Kasparov and Judit Polgár at 135–155, and Gukesh Dommaraju at 135–150, against Carlsen’s 145–160. The ranges do not follow the rating lists. Carlsen’s 2882 peak is above Kasparov’s 2851 (July 1999) and Fischer’s 2785 (July 1972), but peak ratings from different eras favor recent players because of rating inflation, so a higher peak does not make a higher IQ range.
By Elora Mercer, Celebrity Research WriterFigures checked by Leon Falkner, Data & Research AnalystReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief · Last reviewed October 2026
Magnus Carlsen: the documented record
The estimate above rests on this record. Every entry here is a matter of public fact, which is more than can be said for the number itself.
- April 2004Completes his third grandmaster norm at the Dubai Open at 13 years, 4 months and 27 days, the second-youngest grandmaster in history at the time.
- January 2010Reaches No. 1 on the FIDE list for the first time (2810), aged 19; he has been No. 1 on every list since July 2011.
- November 2013Beats Viswanathan Anand 6½–3½ in Chennai to become World Chess Champion.
- May 2014Reaches a FIDE rating of 2882, the highest on record (equaled in August 2019). On the January 2013 list his 2861 had passed Garry Kasparov’s 2851 from July 1999.
- 2014Wins the World Rapid and World Blitz titles, the first player to hold all three world titles at once (repeated in 2019 and 2022), and keeps the classical title against Anand in Sochi in November.
- 2016–2021Keeps the classical title against Sergey Karjakin (November 2016), Fabiano Caruana (November 2018) and Ian Nepomniachtchi (2021).
- 2018–2020Loses at Biel on July 31, 2018; the 125-game unbeaten classical streak that follows ends with a loss at Norway Chess on October 10, 2020 (42 wins, 83 draws).
- July 20, 2022Announces that he will not defend the title in the 2023 match.
- 2023Ding Liren beats Ian Nepomniachtchi in the title match, ending Carlsen’s decade as champion.
- February 2026Wins the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship in Wangels, Germany (February 13–15), beating Fabiano Caruana in the final.
- October 2026FIDE lists him at 2823 classical, 2801 rapid and 2860 blitz, and No. 1 in the world.
Where the 190 figure came from
Following a claim back to its first appearance is the part almost nobody does — and it is what most people are actually asking.
Magnus Carlsen’s IQ has no test behind it: no result, tester or date is on record, and the circulating 190 comes from blog and forum posts, not from a measurement. The chess.com blogs that print it are by 24xru (December 21, 2023 and February 9, 2024) and lichesdude (November 21, 2024), and they give “around 190” and “(190 to 220)”; the February 2024 post says the estimates are “derived from his astounding achievements in chess,” a reading of the record, not a score. Riot IQ’s article of August 3, 2026 finds “no test, no psychologist, no interview” behind the 190. That matches what this site has found about where celebrity IQ numbers come from: a figure repeats without its source attached, and the same 190 circulates for Garry Kasparov.
The only first-hand remark on IQ on record is from March 2010. In an interview for Der Spiegel, reproduced by ChessBase on March 15, 2010, Maik Grossekathöfer asked the 19-year-old world No. 1, “what is your IQ?” Carlsen answered: “I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to know it anyway.” He called himself “a totally normal guy,” credited his success mainly to “the opportunity to learn more, more quickly,” and said he sometimes calculates “15 to 20” moves ahead, with the harder part being to assess the position correctly at the end. That is an answer about not knowing his IQ; it does not say he was never tested. A chess.com post dated November 21, 2024 prints a longer quote in which he says he has never taken an IQ test, but it names no interview or date, so this page does not use it.
What is measured, and public, is chess. FIDE lists him as a grandmaster from 2004: he completed his third norm at the Dubai Open in April 2004, at 13 years, 4 months and 27 days old, and Wikipedia calls him the second-youngest grandmaster in history at the time. FIDE’s top-records list has him at No. 1 in January 2010 (2810) and on every list from July 2011 onward. His peak classical rating of 2882 (May 2014, equaled in August 2019) is the highest FIDE rating on record; with 2861 on the January 2013 list he had passed Kasparov’s 2851 from July 1999. As of October 2026 FIDE rates him 2823 classical, 2801 rapid and 2860 blitz, and he is ranked No. 1 in the world.
The titles are dated. Carlsen beat Viswanathan Anand 6½–3½ in Chennai in November 2013 to become World Chess Champion, kept the title against Anand (2014), Sergey Karjakin (2016), Fabiano Caruana (2018) and Ian Nepomniachtchi (2021), and announced on July 20, 2022 that he would not defend it in 2023; Ding Liren won that match. In 2014 he became the first player to hold the classical, rapid and blitz world titles at once, and he repeated it in 2019 and 2022. His unbeaten run in classical chess lasted 125 games, from a loss at Biel on July 31, 2018 to a loss at Norway Chess on October 10, 2020 (42 wins, 83 draws), the longest at the elite level. Other documented results include seven Norway Chess titles (2016, 2019 to 2022, 2024 and 2025) and the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship in February 2026.
What does the research say about chess skill and IQ? Burgoyne, Sala, Gobet, Macnamara, Campitelli and Hambrick (Intelligence, 2016) pooled 19 studies, 26 independent samples and 1,779 participants. They found an average correlation of r = .24 between chess skill and four broad cognitive abilities, which their 2018 corrigendum corrected to r = .22. The players in those studies were rated well below the 2,800s where Carlsen plays, so the paper says little about a player at his level. More on this at chess ratings and IQ and chess and IQ.
How we read a number →October 2026 list: 2823 standard, 2801 rapid, 2860 blitz; world rank 1; title Grandmaster (GM) 2004. Top records: No. 1 in January 2010 (2810), No. 1 on every list from July 2011, 2882 in May 2014 and again in August 2019.
Asked “what is your IQ?”, Carlsen answers “I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to know it anyway.” He also calls himself “a totally normal guy.” The interviewer puts his grandmaster title at 13 years, four months and 27 days.
19 studies, 26 independent samples, 1,779 participants. Average correlation r = .24 across four broad abilities as published (see the corrigendum).
The authors corrected the handling of dependent measures; the corrected average correlation is r = .22 (it was .24).
Grandmaster title 2004 (third norm at the Dubai Open, April 2004; second-youngest in history at the time); World Champion 2013 (6½–3½ over Anand) and defenses in 2014, 2016, 2018, 2021; the July 20, 2022 announcement; the 2014, 2019 and 2022 triple; rating 2823 and rank No. 1 in October 2026.
Longest unbeaten streak at an elite level: 125 games in classical chess, started after a loss at Biel on July 31, 2018, ended by a loss to Jan-Krzysztof Duda on October 10, 2020; 42 wins and 83 draws. Age at the third grandmaster norm: 13 years, 4 months, 27 days.
Peak ratings: Carlsen 2882 (May 2014), Kasparov 2851 (July 1999), Fischer 2785 (July 1972). Comparing peak ratings across eras “would unduly favor more recent players” because of rating inflation.
A 100-point rating edge means an expected score of 64%, 200 points 76%. Carlsen is the Norway Chess record winner with seven titles (2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024, 2025). Freestyle Chess World Championship: Wangels, February 13–15, 2026, Carlsen beat Fabiano Caruana in the final.
States that Carlsen has never released a tested score and that tracing the “190” finds “no test, no psychologist, no interview.” Published by an IQ-test provider.
Both give an estimate of “around 190” with no test, study or source named; the 2024 post says it is “derived from his astounding achievements in chess.”
Gives “(190 to 220)” and prints a quote in which Carlsen says he has never taken an IQ test, with no interview or date named. Neither is used as evidence.
Label “Magnus Carlsen,” description “Norwegian chess player (born 1990)”; born 1990-11-30; FIDE ID 1503014. The entity is the player.
Checked: the Der Spiegel interview, Wikipedia’s article on Carlsen and the pages above. None shows a score, tester or date; the 190 is attributed to “estimates” only.
The sources behind our estimate
The figures that circulate for Magnus Carlsen, what we were able to confirm, and where the two diverge.
190, and in one post “190 to 220,” on chess.com blog posts that name no test, tester or date. People search for it as “magnus carlsen iq,” “iq of magnus carlsen” and “what is magnus iq.”
No IQ test result for Carlsen has been published, and the 190 has no source. The chess.com blogs that print it are by 24xru (December 21, 2023 and February 9, 2024: “around 190”) and lichesdude (November 21, 2024: “(190 to 220)”), and none names a test. Riot IQ, an IQ-test publisher, wrote on August 3, 2026 that tracing the 190 finds “no test, no psychologist, no interview.” The one first-hand remark on record, from a March 2010 Der Spiegel interview, is “I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to know it anyway.”
Note what happens here: a rigorous number (his rating) gets silently converted into a different kind of number that nobody measured. The only variation, “190 to 220” in one blog post, cites no source either.
Want a number that does hold up? Every figure on this page is somebody’s claim. Take the 30-question test and get a percentile you can check rather than a figure you have to trust.
Magnus Carlsen — frequently asked
What is Magnus Carlsen’s IQ?
Magnus Carlsen has no published IQ test result. The 190 attached to his name has no source, and asked his IQ in a March 2010 Der Spiegel interview he said “I have no idea.” This site’s estimated IQ level for him is 145–160, inferred from his chess record, with a peak FIDE rating of 2882 and 2823 as of October 2026.
Is Magnus Carlsen’s IQ 190?
There is no evidence that it is. The 190 appears on chess.com blog posts from December 2023, February 2024 and November 2024 (one says “190 to 220”), and none names a test; Riot IQ’s August 3, 2026 article finds no source for it. The same 190 circulates for Garry Kasparov.
How high is Magnus Carlsen’s IQ?
It cannot be read off a rating, so this site gives a range, 145–160, not a score. The record sets a floor better than a ceiling: grandmaster at 13 years, 4 months and 27 days, No. 1 on every FIDE list since July 2011, and a 125-game unbeaten classical streak. For comparison, Hikaru Nakamura and Viswanathan Anand are placed at 140–155.
Has Magnus Carlsen taken an IQ test?
No result has been published. In a March 2010 Der Spiegel interview, reproduced by ChessBase, he was asked “what is your IQ?” and answered “I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to know it anyway.” That does not say he was never tested, and a chess.com post claiming he said so names no interview.
Does a chess rating measure IQ?
No. An Elo rating turns results into an expected score: a player rated 100 points higher is expected to score 64%, 200 points higher 76%. Carlsen’s 2823 says how his results compare with other rated players, not how he reasons on other tasks, and it cannot be converted into an IQ. See chess ratings and IQ.
What is Magnus Carlsen’s chess rating?
As of October 2026 his FIDE ratings are 2823 classical, 2801 rapid and 2860 blitz, and he is ranked No. 1 in the world. His peak classical rating is 2882, reached in May 2014 and equaled in August 2019, the highest FIDE rating on record; he passed Garry Kasparov’s 2851 (July 1999) with 2861 in January 2013.
Magnus Carlsen vs Bobby Fischer vs Garry Kasparov: whose IQ is higher?
These are this site’s estimated ranges, not test scores: Bobby Fischer 160–180, Carlsen 145–160 and Garry Kasparov 135–155. Carlsen’s 2882 peak rating exceeds Kasparov’s 2851 and Fischer’s 2785, but ratings from different eras are distorted by rating inflation, so they do not rank intelligence.
Do chess players have higher IQs?
Somewhat. A 2016 meta-analysis in Intelligence (19 studies, 1,779 participants) found an average correlation of r = .24 between chess skill and four broad cognitive abilities, corrected to r = .22 in 2018. The link is modest, and the studies covered players far below Carlsen’s level.
How does my IQ compare with Magnus Carlsen?
You can find out in about fifteen minutes. The IQ Metrics assessment is 30 questions, scored on the same 100-mean scale used throughout this page, so your result and the estimate above are at least expressed in the same units — one measured, one inferred. Once you have a number, the leaderboard shows where it would sit, and how we score and norm it explains the benchmarking.
Where does this estimate come from?
From the documented record rather than a test — the method is named above and set out in full under how we read a number. Compare it against the other athletes profiles, starting with Bobby Fischer.
- Take the 30-question IQ test — get a measured score and percentile of your own
- Average IQ by country — how the scale behaves across populations
- How IQ Metrics scores its assessment — the method behind our own number
- More on how IQ testing works — reliability, error and what a score can and cannot say
- More athletes profiles — same field, same method
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Photograph by Ira Rosenberg for the New York World-Telegram (1967), public domain. Background removed for the portrait above. · Photograph by Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0. Background removed for the portrait above. · Photograph by Przemysław Jahr, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped; background removed for the portrait above.
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