R. Vaishali Wins FIDE Women's Candidates 2026 in Cyprus

By: WE Staff | Friday, 17 April 2026

• R. Vaishali wins Women’s Candidates 2026, to face Ju Wenjun
• Javokhir Sindarov wins Open, to challenge D Gukesh
• Vaishali becomes 2nd Indian after Koneru Humpy to reach the final

R. Vaishali, an Indian Grandmaster, won the FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament 2026 held in Cyprus, finishing first with 8.5 of a possible 14 points after defeating Kateryna Lagno from Russia in the last round, and will have the opportunity to challenge Chinese Grandmaster Ju Wenjun for the title of World Champion later this year.

As for the Open section of the tournament, Javokhir Sindarov from Uzbekistan won the tournament with one round left to play, finishing in first place with 9.5 points, which was two points ahead of Anish Giri from the Netherlands. Sindarov will be Gukesh's opponent for the title against D Gukesh later this year.

An Indian woman has made it to a Women's World Championship final for the second time ever. Previously, Koneru Humpy had challenged Hou Yifan for the women's title in Tirana, Albania, in 2011.

“The last two years have not been the best for me. I dropped a lot of ratings. Except for one tournament, everything was going wrong for me. But I know at my best, I can fight with all of them on equal terms,” Vaishali said at the press conference.

Vaishali’s rating at this tournament was over 100 points lower than Zhu Jiner, who had been the highest rated female player in this event.Like his sister, Praggnanandhaa had a very disappointing finish. He finished 7th having won a total of 1 game out of 14 and that was the 1st round of the event.

Both of them have been at this event before. After round 5 of a 14 round event, Vaishali is in last place along with Divya Deshmukh and Tan Zhongyi. Since then, Vaishali has had a very good tournament: Divya and Tan finished as the bottom two, while Vaishali moved to the top of the standings.

Vaishali's amazing comeback is not surprising considering her performance at the Candidates Tournament in Toronto two years ago: she lost her first four games straight and then came back to win five in a row, leaving her about to win that tournament.

Most grandmasters considered Pragg as a frontrunner for the open-only candidates tournament but not Vaishali, who was not rated as a pre-tournament favorite in an event running in parallel to the men's event. Five-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand named Vaishali as only one of three dark horses when making his tier list predictions for Chess.com and rated 5 other players ahead of Vaishali.