The World Chess Championship 1993 was one of the most controversial matches in chess history, with incumbent World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, and official challenger Nigel Short, splitting from FIDE, the official world governing body of chess, and playing their title match under the auspices of the Professional Chess Association. In response, FIDE stripped Kasparov of his title, and instead held a title match between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman.
The matches were won by Kasparov and Karpov respectively. For the first time in history, there were two rival World Chess Champions, a situation which persisted until the World Chess Championship 2006.
For the first time, the Interzonal was held as a Swiss system tournament in Manila in June and July 1990. 64 contestants played 13 rounds; the top 11 qualified for the Candidates Tournament.
Salov and Thipsay withdrew after seven rounds.
The final four players from the 1988–90 Candidates tournament—Karpov, Timman, Yusupov and Speelman—were seeded directly into the Candidates. They were joined by the top 11 finishers from the Interzonal. These 15 players played a series of Candidates matches. If matches were tied after the allotted games, extra pairs of rapid chess games were played until one player had the lead.
The preliminary matches were played in Sarajevo (Timman-Hübner and Gelfand-Nikolić), Wijk aan Zee (Korchnoi-Sax and Yusupov-Dolmatov), Riga (Ivanchuk-Yudasin), London (Short-Speelman), and Madras (Anand-Dreev) in January and February 1991. All four quarterfinals were played in Brussels in August 1991, both semifinals in Linares in April 1992, and the final in San Lorenzo del Escorial in January 1993.