Women's Candidates Preview

The biggest tournament of the biennial is here: the Candidates! Ju Wenjun is on track to win a modern record 6th Women’s World Championship title in the next Women’s World Championship match unless the winner of this tournament can stop her.

This edition tips the balance back to the younger players. At the time the last Candidates was held, most of the world Top 10 was old enough to potentially be closer to retirement than their prime. Fast forward two years and for the first time since 2019, the majority of the Candidates are under 30 years old. The top three young players in the world — Zhu Jiner (23), Bibisara Assaubayeva (22), and Divya Deshmukh (20) — are playing in the Candidates for the very first time. Expectations are for them to stick at the 2500+ level and feature in many more Candidates for years to come (unless of course, they become World Champion first).

It wouldn’t be a top chess tournament without drama. And the drama has already begun before the tournament even started. Humpy Koneru withdrew just a week before the event over concerns about the safety of holding the tournament in Cyprus while the new war in nearby Iran is still ongoing. She joins past Candidates winner Lei Tingjie, who mysteriously vanished mid-way through the cycle, as the two most notable absences.

The field

Unlike the previous edition, all eight Candidates are GMs. All but one are over 2500 (based on live ratings), and all but one are in the top 10 of my Top 25 rankings.

The 2026 Women’s Candidates. Credit: FIDE.

• The old guard is defended by the defending champion Tan Zhongyi (2535), the oldest player in the field Kateryna Lagno (2508), and last-minute replacement Anna Muzychuk (2522).
• The young players with Candidates experience are 2019 Candidates winnner Aleksandra Goryachkina (2534) and the lowest-rated player in the field Vaishali Rameshbabu (2470).
• The newcomers are the highest-rated player in the field Zhu Jiner (2579) and last year’s two new GMs Bibisara Assaubayeva (2516) and Divya Deshmukh (2497).

Early look at my January 2026 Top 25 rankings that I still haven’t posted. Credit: @OnTheQueenside.

The games are played in the standard FIDE time control, 90 minutes + 30 seconds increment, plus an additional 30 minutes at move 40. This is different from the open Candidates, which has no increment until after move 40. Some people ask “Why don’t the women play the same time control as the men?” But as someone who thinks no-increment is not legitimate enough for classical chess, I’m glad the women get to play with increment and would instead ask “why don’t the men play the same time control as the women?”

Past history

This Women’s Candidates will be the 4th edition since its resurrection in 2019 after a 22-year hiatus. It’s the 3rd edition played in the modern double-round-robin format. (The ’22-’23 edition was switched to knock-out last-minute in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.)

The three most recent winners were Aleksandra Goryachkina (’19), Lei Tingjie (’22-’23), and Tan Zhongyi (’24). Unlike the overall World Championship match which in recent times has rarely been between the two best players in the world (even when Magnus was World Champion), there is a legitimate case that the last three Women’s World Championship matches were actually No. 1 vs. No. 2. Ju Wenjun has been safely No. 1 or No. 2 for the past seven years or more. Meanwhile, the three Candidates winners all seemed like the best player in the world at the time (aside or not aside from Ju Wenjun), as they all dominated the surrounding events in addition to winning the Candidates.

Even though the Candidates winners have been the best players in the field, that doesn’t mean the favourite always wins. None of the three most recent winners were the highest-rated in the field. (In the 13 editions where FIDE ratings existed, the top-rated player has only won once: Susan Polgar in ’94-’95.) Goryachkina and Tan Zhongyi only seemed the most deserving in their years based on their performances the rest of the year after the Candidates. Meanwhile, Lei Tingjie wasn’t the highest-rated in her year because of how few events she was playing. Paradoxically, it’s a safe bet that the most-deserving player will win, but not at all a safe bet that the highest-rated player will win.

Susan Polgar is the only player to win the Women’s Candidates as the top seed. Credit: via Susan Polgar.

There have been 20 editions of the Women’s Candidates ever. The ages of the winners (starting from the most recent) have been 32, 26, 20, 27, 25, 31, 20, 25, 28, 29, 31, 16, 25, 30, 26, 23, 20, 39, 46, 39. (The players whose ages are in bold won the subsequent Women’s World Championship match.) The median age of the Candidates winners is about 27. The highest concentration of winners come from their late 20s to early 30s, with more than half the winners between the ages of 25 to 32. The only player in that range this edition is Aleksandra Goryachkina. If any of the three players in their 30s win the Candidates, they would be the oldest winner since the 1950s (albeit the same was true when Tan Zhongyi won the previous edition).

Tier list

What do I think of each player’s chances of winning? Simply put:

My Candidates tier list. Make your own here: https://tiermaker.com/create/2026-womens-candidates-19294122

Who’s going to win the Candidates?

There are really only two players with a good chance to win the Candidates: Zhu Jiner and Aleksandra Goryachkina. And it’s not because those two are so much ahead of the rest of the field. It’s because Zhu Jiner is so much ahead of the rest of the field.

12-month performance rankings for February 2026. Credit: @OnTheQueenside.

Zhu Jiner’s green flags: Zhu Jiner is the clear best player in the field. Her performance level over the past 12 months was 2595. Not only is that No. 1 among women, it’s more than 50 Elo ahead of anyone else in the Candidates field. She tied for 1st place at every women’s super-tournament she played last year, including right here in Cyprus. She’s the only player in the field you would really expect to have more than a few ~2500 wins every single tournament, and her head-to-head against Divya & Vaishali are particularly good. The recent Women’s Candidates have shown the best player usually wins, and right now that has to be Zhu Jiner.

Zhu Jiner’s red flags: Zhu Jiner is the highest-rated player in the field, and the highest-rated player almost never wins. As great as she was last year, she seemed to have trouble sometimes with converting winning positions. Her only warm-up event this year, the Prague Challengers, was a similar level to the Candidates, and she finished last. Head-to-head, Tan Zhongyi is a threat to her.

Zhu Jiner is the top seed and the favourite. Credit: Michal Walusza.

Aleksandra Goryachkina’s green flags: Aleksandra Goryachkina has won the Candidates before, and now she’s the right age to win it again. Someone other than the highest-rated player has to be the “pretend favourite” and Goryachkina is the only good choice. Her 2525 performance level in the chart might be selling her chances short. Before she played the “fast classical” Women’s World Team Championship — which I don’t think reflects her classical ability — her performance level was at 2550, which is way ahead of everyone else except Zhu Jiner. She also has the highest peak rating in the field at 2611.

Aleksandra Goryachkina’s red flags: Aleksandra Goryachkina is far removed from her peak rating. In recent years, she’s leaned into her positional style maybe too much to the point where you wouldn’t expect her to get enough wins to win the whole tournament. Head-to-head, Tan Zhongyi is also a threat to her.

Aleksandra Goryachkina has green flags too. She is the "favourite" for people think who the real favourite never wins. Credit: Michal Walusza.

Can anyone else win the Candidates?

Bibisara Assaubayeva reminds me a bit of Aleksandra Goryachkina when she won the Candidates back in 2019. Like Goryachkina back then, Bibisara is playing the event a year removed from when she earned the GM title. And like Goryachkina, it seemingly took at least a year longer than expected to make it to GM. Goryachkina entered the 2019 tournament in the low 2500s, but used the Candidates as a springboard to nearly make it to 2600. It wouldn’t really surprise me if Bibisara did the same thing. She looked really good in her only warm-up event, the Tata Steel Challengers, where she made a 2600+ performance over the full 13 rounds, a much more difficult feat than a usual GM norm. My main concern is she hasn’t won a women’s super-tournament before.

Bibisara Assaubayeva is looking for that breakout performance. Credit: Michal Walusza.

Vaishali Rameshbabu won five games in a row at the last Candidates. Her six wins in total were the most out of anyone, even more than the winner Tan Zhongyi. Unfortunately, her five losses in total were also the most in the field. The 11 decisive games earned her a reputation for being some kind of insane tactical player. In my opinion though, that may have been undeserved. Her play is more tempered than people give her credit for. With just a few more draws than last time, she could easily be in the mix. If there’s one player that could really give her trouble, it’s also Tan Zhongyi, who knocked her out of the World Cup and has won four of their five decisive classical games.

Anna Muzychuk will get to test the value of prep for the Candidates. She hasn’t prepped much and the field probably hasn’t prepped much for her either. That might sound bad, but late replacements tend to do well, maybe too well. We all remember Ding won the World Championship as a late replacement for the Candidates. Even though Anna didn’t qualify originally, she did deserve to qualify. She was the clear best player in 2025 who was not already qualified, and should have won the Women’s FIDE Circuit if it had a halfway-decent point system. As a replacement, I think Anna has even better chances than if she had qualified normally.

Who is not going to win?

Divya Deshmukh is who I low-key want to win the Candidates because if an Indian player won (and even more so if Divya won), it would draw more interest to women’s chess than maybe ever. Things have been going well for her, even after she won the World Cup. She had never actually made a GM norm at the time she got the GM title directly through World Cup, but since then she has made two GM norms in only the past six months. That said, I still don’t like her chances. Her career-best performance rating in a tournament is 2613. To win this tournament, she would probably need a career-best performance of 2625 (for 9/14), and over 14 rounds no less. If she did win though, it would bode well for her career. Divya is 20, and all three 20-year-olds who won the Women’s Candidates either became World Champion or reached 2600.

A Divya win would be historic. Credit: Michal Walusza.

Tan Zhongyi won the last Candidates. She’s not going to win this Candidates. Tan had a career year in 2024 with a performance level over 2600, but she didn’t come close to sustaining that in 2025. By now, she’s probably too old to win. But the bigger factor against her is that only one player has ever won multiple Candidates back-to-back: Alla Kushnir who won three in a row from 1964 to 1971. I don’t think Tan will add her name to that list. If you want to hope, she does have a great H2H against both Zhu Jiner and Goryachkina, and I would still expect her to have among the most wins and most decisive games. Also, I said she was a long shot last time.

Kateryna Lagno has little in her favour. She probably did the least to get here, as she qualified by finishing 2nd in the Women’s Grand Swiss, which was already very weak from most of the top players skipping it. Like Tan, she’s also probably too old to win. And beyond the recent Grand Swiss, you have to go back to 2022 to find another time Lagno did well in a classical tournament.

Predictions

My full standings predictions are:

1. Zhu Jiner
2. Bibisara Assaubayeva
3. Aleksandra Goryachkina
4. Divya Deshmukh
5. Vaishali Rameshbabu
6. Tan Zhongyi
7. Anna Muzychuk
8. Kateryna Lagno

So few top seeds have actually won the Women’s Candidates that we are basically due for another one to win again. I think that Zhu Jiner having a bad tournament last month will actually help her, as she’s doing everything she can to “not be the top seed.” Last year, she only had one bad tournament the whole year and she followed it up with three ~2700 performances in a row at her next three full tournaments.

Coverage

The Candidates start Sunday, March 29th in Cyprus.

Credit: FIDE (but edited by me, so weeks are 7 days long instead of 3.)

The FIDE broadcast features chess24’s commentator dream team Peter Svidler and Jan Gustafsson. The chess.com broadcast will have someone good commentating or maybe someone not good commentating, I don’t think it’s been announced yet.

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Ju Wenjun had a great World Championship match last year, but otherwise didn’t play much and didn’t have any other good results. Could this be the best chance to take her down? We’ll have to wait and see, and maybe that will serve as some extra motivation for the players. See you on Sunday!

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