GMBilel Bellahcene

Bilel Bellahcene was born in Strasbourg in 1998. He became a grandmaster in 2018 and began representing Algeria that year, playing first board at the Batumi Olympiad. He won the 2019 North African zonal with a perfect nine points from nine games. That result took him to the World Cup, where he drew both classical games against Hikaru Nakamura before losing the tiebreak. Bellahcene later won the African championship in Cairo in 2025 and retained the title in Botswana in 2026.