2026 Women's Top 25 Rankings: New No. 1!

I know. I know. The Candidates are over and it’s almost time for a new set of rankings. But we still haven’t had a dedicated post on the all-important first set of rankings for the year!

Before we jump ahead to the May rankings post-Candidates, let’s review where we were at the start of the year, summarizing what happened across 2025 as a whole, and see how the rankings changed from the very start of 2025. This is the January 2026 Top 25 rankings post.

If you’re new or you haven’t seen my previous sets of rankings, these are the Top 25 women’s chess players based on both results and performance across all OTB formats in the past two years, with emphasis on classical and the most recent 12 months. (Check out here for the full methodology.)

(And in case you’re worried about bias from the Candidates, I did already reveal most of the list in my previous post from before the Candidates, and I’m not changing anything.)

New rankings (January 2026)

This set of rankings includes everything through the end of 2025. The big highlight was the World Rapid & Blitz Championships, but there was also the European Team Championship and the European Club Cup.

The biggest tournaments that no longer count towards the most recent year are the 2024 editions of the those four tournaments, as well as the 2024 Tata Steel India Rapid & Blitz. It doesn’t include this month’s Candidates or this year’s Tata Steel and Tata Steel India yet.

Here are the new rankings!

New World No. 1

For the first time since I started the Top 25 rankings back in January 2024, Ju Wenjun is not the World No. 1. Zhu Jiner takes her place at the top of the list. Ju Wenjun drops to No. 2 after not defending her World Blitz title or her World Rapid runner-up. She did defend her World Championship title, but that was basically her only big result of 2025. Meanwhile, Zhu Jiner took her place as World Rapid runner-up, not that that’s even a big deal compared to her laundry list of other accolades. In 2025, Zhu Jiner won the Women’s Grand Prix series, tied for first in every leg of the WGP series, and had three performances near or above 2700 — most notably her Board 1 gold in the European Club Cup and her 5th place in the 2600+ Fujairah Superstars. You probably have to go back to 2022 or so (when Goryachkina was 2600+) to find the last time Ju Wenjun wasn’t the deserved World No. 1.

Zhu Jiner is now World No. 1, and deservedly so. Credit: Abhilash.

For Zhu Jiner, it’s a quick rise from where she was at the start of last year, but not out of nowhere. If you go back to my post from last year’s January 2025 rankings, you’ll see I wrote: “Zhu Jiner should not be overlooked.” Back then, she already rose from No. 15 (in January 2024) to No. 7 at the year’s end. And she continued to prove that this past year as well, making the jump from No. 7 all the way to No. 1. Overall, that’s a rise from No. 15 to No. 1 in just two years. For comparison, No. 15 on the current list is Polina Shuvalova. Imagine her reaching the summit of women’s chess by the start of 2028. That’s basically what Zhu Jiner did.

Unfortunately, as we already know, Zhu Jiner couldn’t get it done in the Candidates that just finished. But even though she won’t get a direct opportunity at Ju Wenjun in the World Championship match, she will get a shot at Magnus Carlsen in TePe Sigeman early next month. Zhu Jiner finished 2025 with a 2592 overall performance rating. If she’s not playing in the match, I imagine the next goal for her would be to hit 2600 rating. Based on her performance level last year, that might not be so far off.

As for Ju Wenjun, she'll get a chance to take back the No. 1 ranking when they both play Norway Chess in June.

Oh no

Players like Zhu Jiner had their ups, but unfortunately some other players had their downs.

It was a mixed year for the moms in chess. Humpy had a fantastic year, and qualified for the Candidates together with fellow mom Kateryna Lagno. On the other side, Sara Khadem was the highest-ranked player from the start of last year to drop out of the Top 25, while Alina Kashlinskaya had the biggest drop from No. 12 to No. 23. Nevertheless, they’re both still reasonably active and I hope to see them back up the rankings some time soon.

It also wasn’t a good year for the players who just barely made the Top 25 at the start of the year. Out of the bottom five in the rankings, only Leya Garifullina — who was No. 22 in the January 2025 rankings — survived until the end of the year.

The other down years to note are both of the two most recent World Championship Challengers. Lei Tingjie didn’t really have a down year, as her performance level is still near the top. Nonetheless, she dropped from No. 4 to No. 11 just because she largely stopped playing. Tan Zhongyi might be more concerning with her drop from No. 2 to No. 9. That being said, she’s been at the lower end of the top 10 for much of her career, and that only reinforces just how amazing her 2024 year was.

Top 25 players from January 2025 no longer ranked now:
IM Sara Khadem (20), IM Olga Badelka (21), IM Nurgyul Salimova (23), IM Dinara Wagner (24), IM Yuliia Osmak (25)

A warm welcome

Just because the players who fell off the rankings were all from the bottom of the list doesn’t mean the newcomers are the ones at the bottom too. Carissa Yip burst onto the list at No. 12 thanks to her Cairns Cup victory. She was joined most notably by fellow up-and-comers Song Yuxin at No. 14 — who starred at the World Cup and Grand Swiss — and Anna Shukhman at No. 21, the youngest World Junior Champion in over a decade. The three of them are also perhaps the most notable pursuers of the GM title in the next year or so.

Carissa Yip was in the “Next 5” (No. 26 to 30) in the January 2025 rankings. Now she’s up to World No. 12. Credit: Dariusz Gorzinski.

But the highest-ranked player to make their entry onto the list is actually Hou Yifan at No. 8, who had her most active year by far since she largely retired eight years ago. She had two pretty good titles, one each in rapid and blitz, too. More recently, she also helped launch a new women’s rapid & blitz tour sponsored by Wadim Rosenstein. Could that be a sign we’ll see her even more in 2026?

Aside from the newcomers and Zhu Jiner, there weren’t really any particular big risers in the rankings. The top 10 was almost completely unchanged from a year ago, with just Hou Yifan replacing Lei Tingjie. Three Top 10 players managed to move up three spots: Anna Muzychuk (No. 6 to No. 3), Divya Deshmukh (No. 9 to No. 6), and Bibisara Assaubayeva (No. 10 to No. 7).

Top 25 players now who weren’t ranked in January 2025:
GM Hou Yifan (8), IM Carissa Yip (12), IM Song Yuxin (14), IM Mai Narva (20), WGM Anna Shukhman (21)

---

I said it at the start of 2025, and I’ll say it again now: Take a look at the current Top 25 list. One year from now, you can expect about five to drop out, five new names, and one or two new names in the Top 10. It happened this time. It will happen again next year. But do you know who it will be? The best way to figure it out is to watch the games.

For daily coverage of women's chess, follow Women's Chess Coverage on Twitter. For more posts, check out Women's Chess Coverage on Substack, where you'll be able to catch every post before it goes up on lichess, plus extra posts and related content!