GMDavid Navara

David Navara was born in Prague in 1985. His childhood coaches included Miloslav Vanka, Josef Přibyl, Luděk Pachman and Vlastimil Jansa. At sixteen he made his Czech national-team debut in the 2001 European Team Championship, scoring seven points from nine games. He became a grandmaster in 2002, shortly before his seventeenth birthday. In 2003 he won the open section of the Rubinstein Memorial. His first Czech national championship followed in 2004. He eventually won fourteen national titles, including the 2026 championship. His 2007 Wijk aan Zee debut included victories over Ruslan Ponomariov and Magnus Carlsen. He also won the Ordix Open rapid tournament that year. Navara earned an individual gold medal on board two at the 2012 Istanbul Olympiad. He won the European Blitz Championship in 2014 and repeated that success in 2022 and 2023. He has also played a long series of exhibition matches in Prague against leading grandmasters, including Ding Liren and Pentala Harikrishna.