Golden period! Divya Deshmukh wins Women’s Chess World Cup at 19: How India’s youngsters take over world stage | Chess News

Divya Deshmukh (Photo: X/@FIDE_chess)

In one other spectacular chess triumph for India, 19-year-old Divya Deshmukh emerged because the torchbearer of a brand new era. The Nagpur native scripted historical past by profitable the FIDE Women’s World Cup 2025, defeating veteran Koneru Humpy in a nerve-wracking tiebreaker on Monday. With this win, Divya not solely claimed probably the most prestigious titles in ladies’s chess but additionally earned the coveted Grandmaster (GM) title, a feat nobody anticipated at the event’s begin.“I didn’t even have a single GM norm before this. Now, I’m a Grandmaster. It feels surreal,” mentioned an emotional Divya, overwhelmed after her victory towards an opponent twice her age. She grew to become solely the fourth Indian lady to attain GM standing, following within the footsteps of Humpy, Harika Dronavalli, and Vaishali Rameshbabu.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Divya’s win is only one spotlight in a golden period for Indian chess. The nation’s younger stars have taken over the worldwide stage with poise and energy. At the forty fifth FIDE Chess Olympiad in Budapest in 2024, each India’s males’s and ladies’s groups clinched gold medals for the primary time in historical past.The ladies’s workforce, that includes Harika Dronavalli, Vaishali Rameshbabu, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal, and Tania Sachdev, held their nerve beneath strain and delivered constant performances to beat international powerhouses.On the boys’s facet, the “Big Three” of Indian chess, Gukesh D, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, and Arjun Erigaisi, led the Open workforce to gold. Gukesh’s journey didn’t cease there; he went on to grow to be the World Chess Champion, defeating China’s Ding Liren to grow to be the youngest Indian ever to assert the title at the age of 18.

Adding to the 12 months’s accolades, 19-year-old Praggnanandhaa kicked off 2025 by profitable the Tata Steel Masters at Wijk aan Zee, defeating Gukesh in a gripping finale. Meanwhile, 18-year-old Pranav Venkatesh grew to become the World Junior Chess Champion final March, additional highlighting the depth of younger expertise rising from India.Five-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand hailed this as a “great celebration of Indian chess,” and rightly so. With youngsters now dominating the world’s hardest chess competitions, India’s future on the 64 squares seems brighter than ever.