The World Chess Championship 2008 was a best-of-twelve-games match between the World Chess Champion, Viswanathan Anand, and the previous World Champion, Vladimir Kramnik. Kramnik had been granted a rematch after losing his title to Anand at the World Chess Championship 2007.

After eleven games, Anand successfully defended his title by a final score of 6½–4½ (3 victories and one defeat).

The match took place at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn, Germany, between 14 October and 29 October 2008.

The match was a one-off event in which the previous world champion (Vladimir Kramnik) had been given the right to challenge to regain his title. Its origin was in the complications in reunifying the world title in 2006.

The chess world title was split between 1993 and 2006. In early 2006, FIDE had already announced the conditions for the World Chess Championship 2007: an eight-player tournament which included FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov, but not "Classical" World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. FIDE later organized a reunification match between Kramnik and Topalov (the World Chess Championship 2006), with Kramnik to take Topalov's place in the 2007 tournament if he was to win the match. Kramnik did win the match and the reunified World Chess Championship, and so Topalov was excluded from the 2007 World Championship.

The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title.

The official world championship is generally regarded to have begun in 1886, when the two leading players in Europe and United States, Wilhelm Steinitz and Johann Zukertort, played a match. From 1886 to 1946, the champion set the terms, requiring any challenger to raise a sizable stake and defeat the champion in a match in order to become the new world champion. From 1948 to 1993, the championship was administered by FIDE, the world chess federation. In 1993, the reigning champion (Garry Kasparov) broke away from FIDE, leading to the creation of two rival championships. This situation remained until 2006, when the title was unified at the World Chess Championship 2006.

The current world champion is Viswanathan Anand, who won the World Chess Championship 2007 and successfully defended his title against former world champion Vladimir Kramnik in the World Chess Championship 2008, and again against the challenger Veselin Topalov in the World Chess Championship 2010. He again defended his title against challenger Boris Gelfand in the World Chess Championship 2012.

Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik (Russian: Влади́мир Бори́сович Кра́мник; born 25 June 1975) is a Russian chess grandmaster. He was the Classical World Chess Champion from 2000 to 2006, and the undisputed World Chess Champion from 2006 to 2007. He has also won the two strongest tournaments (by rating strength) in chess history: the 2009 Mikhail Tal Memorial and the 2010 Grand Slam Masters Final. He has won three team gold medals and three individual medals at Chess Olympiads.

In October 2000, he defeated Garry Kasparov in a match played in London, and became the Classical World Chess Champion. In late 2004, Kramnik successfully defended his title against challenger Péter Lékó in a drawn match played in Brissago, Switzerland. In October 2006, Kramnik, the Classical World Champion, defeated reigning FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov in a unification match, the World Chess Championship 2006. As a result Kramnik became the first undisputed World Champion, holding both the FIDE and Classical titles, since Kasparov split from FIDE in 1993. In 2007, Kramnik lost the title to Viswanathan Anand, who won the World Chess Championship tournament ahead of Kramnik. He challenged Anand at the World Chess Championship 2008 to regain his title, but lost.

Johannes Hermann Zukertort (7 September 1842 – 20 June 1888) was a leading chess master of German-Polish-Jewish origin. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, and lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, which is generally seen as the first World Chess Championship match, he was also beaten by Steinitz in 1872 in unofficial championship; both were best players in the world.

Zukertort filled his relatively short life with a wide range of other achievements as a soldier, musician, linguist, journalist and political activist.

Zukertort was born 7 September 1842 in Lublin, Congress Poland. He said that his mother was the Baroness Krzyżanowska (Krzyzanovska). His father was a Christian Protestant missionary of Jewish origin. The Christian mission among the Jewish population in Russian-occupied Poland was considered an illegal activity. Therefore, the Zukertort family emigrated to Prussia. In 1861, he enrolled at the University of Breslau (Wrocław) to study medicine; he later claimed that he completed his degree, but this has been disputed. In any case he met Adolf Anderssen while in Breslau (Wrocław) and fell in love with chess.

Wilhelm (later William) Steinitz (Prague, May 17, 1836 – August 12, 1900) was an Austrian and then American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier. Steinitz lost his title to Emanuel Lasker in 1894 and also lost a rematch in 1897.

Statistical rating systems give Steinitz a rather low ranking among world champions, mainly because he took several long breaks from competitive play. However, an analysis based on one of these rating systems shows that he was one of the most dominant players in the history of the game. As author Will Hartson wrote in his chess historical, Steinitz was unbeaten in over 25 years of match play. He was perhaps the first of the modern champions, and established a greater depth in playing.

Although Steinitz became "world number one" by winning in the all-out attacking style that was common in the 1860s, he unveiled in 1873 a new positional style of play and demonstrated that it was superior to the previous style. His new style was controversial and some even branded it as "cowardly", but many of Steinitz's games showed that it could also set up attacks as ferocious as those of the old school. Steinitz was also a prolific writer on chess, and defended his new ideas vigorously. The debate was so bitter and sometimes abusive that it became known as the "Ink War". By the early 1890s, Steinitz's approach was widely accepted and the next generation of top players acknowledged their debt to him, most notably his successor as world champion, Emanuel Lasker.