The winner of this tournament was the Polish grandmaster Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who won without losing any games either in classical chess or in the rapid tiebreakers.

The tournament was an 8-round knockout event, with the top 50 seeds given a bye directly into the second round.

Players qualifying for the event included: The participants were seeded by their FIDE rating of June 2021.

For the first time, a hybrid format of online chess under arbiter supervision was allowed to be a part of the qualification process, due to the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in organizing over the board competition.

Because of this and the two Zone 3.5 withdrawals, the number of presidential nominees (PN) increased from four to twelve, with the eight extra being:[15][5]