Women's World Chess Championship 2025 Preview: Tan Zhongyi Profile

The Match

The 2025 FIDE Women’s World Chess Championship will take place from April 1 to 23 between Shanghai and Chongqing, China. The current Women's World Chess Champion, GM Ju Wenjun, will face off against the challenger, GM Tan Zhongyi, in 12 games of classical chess. Each round will be streamed by Lichess on YouTube and Twitch; more details will be coming soon.

Player Profile

Tan Zhongyi has already won the Women's World Championship — that in 2017 against GM Anna Muzychuk. She subsequently lost the title to Ju Wenjun in 2018, so the current match will be of particular interest to both players. In our interview with Tan, she did in fact state that she wanted to "finish her revenge".

Apart from having won the most prestigious title of them all, Tan has also enjoyed a long and storied career. We note some of her other most noteworthy achievements:

1. U10 Girls World Champion (twice, in 2000 and 2001)
2. U12 Girls World Champion (2002)
3. Asian Women's Blitz Champion (2014)
4. Chinese Women's Chess Champion (2015)
5. Women's Rapid Champion (2022)

Path to Women's World Chess Championship 2025

Tan qualified to the 2024 Women's Candidates by finishing in third place in the FIDE Women's Grand Swiss Tournament 2023. Only two qualification spots were available, but GM Anna Muzychuk, who finished in second, had already qualified, so Tan received the second qualification spot. Tan then went on to win the 2024 Women's Candidates with a crushing performance, only sharing the lead in rounds 8 and 10 and otherwise maintaining a lead over the remaining rounds. You can find more information on Tan's win by reading our blogs, starting from round 1 to round 14.

Notable Games

Tan's style has produced a myriad of tactical masterpieces. We note the following three games which illustrate Tan's brilliance quite well.

In the first game, a young Tan sacrifices piece after piece to hunt down WGM Zhang Xiaowen's king.

Our second game, played against WGM Natalija Pogonina, showcases yet another tactical onslaught by Tan:

Finally, Tan has had her fair share of victories against her Women's World Championship opponent, GM Ju Wenjun; one notable game is the following, a strong defensive display by Tan:

Preview

Stay tuned for the next preview post, which will look at the current Women's World Champion, Ju Wenjun. The third preview post will look at the 2025 championship and present some statistics-based predictions as we have offered before.