The new FIDE Women’s Grand Prix season will see 20 top women players, each playing in three out of six tournaments, each featuring a 10-player round robin, fighting for the top two places leading to the 2028 Women’s Candidates Tournament.
With final standings determined on cumulative series of points and not just raw scores, the qualification model mixes merit and consistency.
The 20 players are selected via several routes, with many names already known:
– FIDE Women’s World Championship Match 2025 participants: GMs Ju Wenjun and Tan Zhongyi
– Top two from the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix Series 2024-25: GMs Zhu Jiner and Aleksandra Goryachkina
– Top three from the FIDE Women’s World Cup 2025: GMs Divya Deshmukh, Humpy Koneru, Lei Tingjie.
– Top three from the FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss 2025: GMs Vaishali R, Kateryna Lagno, and Bibissara Assaubayeva.
– One spot for the FIDE Women’s Events 2024-25 (the highest ranked player excluding those who have qualified for WGP Series via other paths): GM Anna Muzychuk
– Three spots via Standard Rating in the April 2026 FIDE Rating List: IM Polina Shuvalova, GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, and IM Carissa Yip
– Six nominations by organisers of each of the events in the series (to be determined)
Polina Shuvalova, Alexandra Kosteniuk, and Carissa Yip are the newest qualifiers, based on the FIDE April rating list. The three rating qualifiers reached the spots not just by having the highest rating available, but by playing in at least three events, including at least two individual, from a specified series of competitions between May 2025 and April 2026.
Changes compared to the 2024-2025 edition
The most significant change in the new circuit compared to the 2024-2025 edition is in qualification pathways: event-based performance is given more prominence than pure rating. While the 2024-2025 cycle saw four rating spots, the new edition has three and includes a stricter and more structured event-performance pathway than before.
Consistency with the prize fund
The tournament prize table and WGP points are unchanged. Each tournament features a minimum prize fund of 80,000 EUR, with a series-end pot of 120,000 EUR, funded by 20,000 EUR from each of the six organisers. The winner of each tournament gets 130 WGP points as well as 18,000 EUR, followed by 13,000 EUR for second and down to 3,500 EUR for 10th place.
FIDE President Dvorkovich: A flagship project promoting women’s chess
“The Women’s Grand Prix is very popular with women players as it gives them more opportunities to play in serious competitive events and promote themselves. The Grand Prix series has been one of the flagship projects for FIDE in promoting top-level women’s chess,” FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich said.
“With six tournaments taking place around the world, this helps spread the word about women’s chess and its importance, and we’re very proud of the work we’ve done on this and plan to do more in the future,” Dvorkovich added.
The FIDE Women’s Grand Prix began in 2009 as one of the most significant events in the world championship qualification cycle. Initially launched as a six-tournament circuit, the number of tournaments was later reduced to five and then four before returning to six events in 2024–2025. China’s Hou Yifan dominated the first three seasons, before being succeeded by Ju Wenjun (the current women’s world champion), then Aleksandra Goryachkina and Kateryna Lagno. The 2024–2025 edition was again won by a Chinese player, with Zhu Jiner taking the crown.
The dates and venues for the 2026-2027 tournaments will be announced in due course.