Indian Joy As Vaishali Wins Women's Candidates To Earn World Title Shot

Uzbekistan's day was Tuesday. But Wednesday was unquestionably India's as GM Vaishali R ended a thrilling 2026 FIDE Women’s Candidates as the outright champion.

The 24-year-old from Chennai, who saw her younger brother GM Praggnanandhaa R stumble in the open event, will now will challenge GM Ju Wenjun for the Women’s World Championship. It is a stunning achievement for the golden girl of India's golden generation.

In an exciting final round, Vaishali stayed calm to defeat GM Kateryna Lagno with a perfectly-prepared flourish and end with a score of 8.5/14. Her closest challenger GM Bibisara Assaubayeva managed only a draw in her must-win game against another Indian talent, GM Divya Deshmukh. One Indian did another a favour.

Vaishali said afterwards: "It's amazing, a dream come true for me. When I lost to Zhu Jiner, everything suddenly opened up, and I'm happy I was able to stay focused in the last two rounds and give my best."

The romantics may perhaps have been pining for an Assaubayeva win after seeing her special friend, the Uzbek sensation GM Javokhir Sindarov already crowned winner of the FIDE Candidates on Tuesday before the final round. On Round 14 he made an end-of-event 10-move draw with GM Wei Yi.

With the final round draw, Sindarov joins GMs Ian Nepomniachtchi and GM Vishy Anand as the only players to win the Candidates in this format without losing once. He is now on 51-game classical unbeaten streak.

Indian chess fans won't have cared about that, however.

India now has the mouth-watering prospect of boasting the classical World Champion, if the holder GM Gukesh D beats Sindarov, and the Women's World Champion if Vaishali can overcome Ju.

Anand, India's greatest ever player, was fulsome in his praise on X:

Sindarov's draw allowed both GM Anish Giri and pre-tournament favourite GM Fabiano Caruana to move up in the standings with final-round victories over GMs Matthias Bluebaum and Andrey Esipenko, respectively.

But it will be scant consolation: they came to Cyprus with one aim only. The Candidates—the only route to the World Championship—is a cruel tournament and 14 players across two tournaments leave with their lifetime dreams shattered, until next time.

Until then, we have two World Championship events this year to look forward to. When and where? FIDE will announce that soon.