Nigel Short (born June 1, 1965 in Leigh Lancashire) is an English chess player. In 1993 he played Garry Kasparov for the Professional Chess Association World Chess Championship, losing 12.5 - 7.5. He had won matches against former world champion Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman on his way to meeting Kasparov.

Short won the British Chess Championship in 1984, 1987 and 1998 and the English Championship in 1991. One of Short's best tournament results came at the Amsterdam VSB tournament in 1991 when he tied for first place with Valery Salov ahead of both Kasparov and Karpov. In April 2003 he won the Hunguest Hotels Super Chess Tournament held in Budapest ahead of Boris Gelfand , Judit Polgar and Péter Lékó among others (Polgar and Lékó were in the world's top ten at the time). In 2004 he won the Commonwealth Chess Championship and the Gibraltar Chess Congress as well as a tournament in Taiyuan, China.

In the January 2005 FIDE rating list, Short was ranked number 28 in the world with an Elo rating of 2674, making him England's number two (behind Michael Adams

As well as his playing activities, Short writes the chess column in the British newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph.

In recognition of his chess accomplishments, in 1999 he was appointed MBE. He is married to Rhea Argyro Karageorgiou - a drama-therapist - and has two children: Kyveli Aliki (born July 7, 1991) and Nicholas Darwin (born December 18, 1998).