R Vaishali became the third Indian to qualify for the 2026 FIDE Women's Candidates tournament, after she defended her FIDE Grand Swiss title in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Vaishali finished with 8 points over 11 rounds, level with Kateryna Lagno, but won on tie-breaks to defend her title.
This is another chapter in what has been a pathbreaking 2025 for Indian women's chess. Divya Deshmukh won the World Cup, Koneru Humpy was in that World Cup final, and now, Vaishali has become the third Indian to qualify for next year's Candidates tournament.
For Vaishali personally, though, the win here has been a bright spark for her in what has been a difficult year.
Just a few weeks before it, she competed in the Challengers section of the Chennai Grand Masters tournament and finished with 1.5 points in 9 rounds. Before that, she'd lost in the quarterfinals of the women's World Cup to Tan Zhongyi, finished fifth out of six at the Norway chess women's tournament, fourth in the women's Grand Prix event in Austria, sixth in the Pune Grand Prix, and ninth in the Tata Steel Women's Challengers tournament. Heading into the Grand Swiss, she had no confidence in classical chess.
Even here, unlike the 2023 edition that she went through unbeaten, Vaishali had a tough loss in the eighth round against Bibisara Assaubayeva. So close to the end, it might have been a debilitating defeat to bounce back from, especially considering the form she'd carried into the tournament. But bounce back she did, and spectacularly so, drawing against Yuxin Song and Tan either side of a superb win against Mariya Muzychuk.
Speaking to Chessbase India after her final round draw against Tan, Vaishali said that it had been really hard to take the disappointment of that tournament in Chennai. In fact, she had even decided to not play in the Grand Swiss. It had taken some real convincing to get her back on track. Her brother R Praggnanandhaa and GM Karthikeyan Murali had had conversations with her, particularly the latter, she said, to convince her to play the Grand Swiss. Karthikeyan, like Vaishali, is also from the coach RB Ramesh stable in Chennai.
So, the fact that she began with three wins in a row at the Grand Swiss would've been an important shot in the arm for her confidence. It was that lost confidence, she said in that interview with Chessbase India, that made her "really trouble" her parents after the Chennai Grand Masters. She needed to find answers, was growing frustrated at not finding them, and was spiralling.
Those conversations with Karthikeyan and Praggnanandhaa helped her, she said, and then she spent the two weeks before the tournament knuckling down and preparing herself for the Grand Swiss. There were mistakes that needed to be ironed out of her game, bad habits that had crept in. She was getting caught out through middlegames and endgames continuously in Chennai. It was so bad that she had a run of seven losses in a row. A full week of losing, she said, was "so bad" for her mental state.
Her wins all came at the right time. The first three -- against Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova, Eline Roebers and Olga Badelka -- were straightforward and allowed her to get her head in the game. The next two, against Ims Ulviyya Fataliyeva and Guo Qi, were huge boosters. And then came that penultimate round win against Mariya Muzychuk, which really took the pressure off her before the final round and meant that she could focus on playing solidly against the incredible Tan.
With the comeback completed, Vaishali's win will now allow her a few months of calm confidence where she can knuckle down and prepare for the Candidates. She has prior experience of being there as well, which will only be a massive help. The World Championship dream lives on.