‘I Want to Keep Making History’: How Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, Became the Youngest Woman Grandmaster in Chess History

On Sunday, September 28, 2026, at the 46th Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Bodhana Sivanandan completed her final round and secured her third and final Woman Grandmaster norm — the last milestone required for FIDE, the International Chess Federation, to confer upon her the highest female-only title in chess.

She is 11 years old.

The 11-year-old chess prodigy has become the youngest woman grandmaster of all time, after a strong performance at the 46th Chess Olympiad. She is from northwest London and represented England at the tournament in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, which ended on Sunday. In an interview released on YouTube on Sunday, she told the International Chess Federation (FIDE) that she is keen to “keep making history.”

“I’m happy to do it, but I want to keep going and keep making history as well, instead of just stopping here,” said Sivanandan.

The Olympiad Performance: Top Board, Eight Points, No Pressure Shown

The scale of what Sivanandan achieved in Samarkand is not simply a matter of the title itself. It is a matter of how she earned it.

At the Olympiad, Sivanandan played all 11 rounds on England’s top board, where she scored eight points. Playing on the top board — the position assigned to a team’s highest-ranked player — at an international chess Olympiad, at the age of eleven, would be considered a demanding assignment for players a decade her senior. Sivanandan did not appear to find it so.

She explained that this was her second Olympiad. “It kind of felt very similar to the last one except I was playing on a different board,” she said. Asked about her love of chess, Sivanandan said she enjoyed the travel involved as well as the sport’s benefit to her school work. “It links to loads of school subjects so it’s really useful there as well,” she said.

Her success over the weekend has earned her a second International Master (IM) norm, which takes her another step closer to becoming an international master. The WGM title is the highest female-only title in chess; the International Master and Grandmaster titles are open to all genders. At 11, Sivanandan is already accumulating norms toward the latter.

The Origins: A Chessboard in a Departing Friend’s Bag

Bodhana Sivanandan’s path to the history books began, in the most un-dramatic of circumstances, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown of 2020.

Her love for chess first started during the lockdown in 2020, when she was just six years old. She was given some toys and books, which included a chess set. Bodhana is famously a self-taught genius, having first picked up chess when her father Siva’s friend was going back to India and gave her some bags which contained a chessboard.

The family had no chess background. In 2024, Sivanandan’s father told the BBC that “nobody at all” in their family had previously excelled at chess. The absence of family tradition in the game makes her rapid ascent all the more striking: within four years of receiving that chessboard, she was representing England internationally. Within six years, she was the youngest Woman Grandmaster in history.

Her family is of Tamil heritage — her father’s name, Siva, situates the family within the large Tamil diaspora community in northwest London, of which Harrow is a center.

A Cascade of Records: From Liverpool to Samarkand

The Samarkand milestone is the culmination of a record-breaking sequence that has unfolded with almost metronomic regularity over the past two years.

In July 2025, at age ten, she became the youngest chess player to earn a Woman Grandmaster norm; the previous youngest to do so was Hou Yifan as an 11-year-old in 2005.

Last year, Sivanandan became the youngest female player to beat a grandmaster when she defeated Peter Wells at the British Chess Championships. She beat 60-year-old grandmaster Wells at the age of just 10 years, five months and three days, breaking a record set by American Carissa Yip, who was 10 years, 11 months and 20 days old when she defeated a grandmaster in 2019, according to FIDE.

The International Master title — which is open to all players regardless of gender — is the next formal landmark on her path. Her success over the weekend has earned her a second International Master (IM) norm, which takes her another step closer to becoming an international master.

Earlier this year, in July, she earned her first International Master (IM) norm at the Dole Open in France, becoming the youngest girl to achieve an IM norm. She also defeated grandmaster Marc’Andria Maurizzi, becoming the youngest girl known to beat a player rated above 2,600.

Recently, Bodhana secured a remarkable victory at the European Club Cup in Rhodes, Greece, by defeating former World Champion Grandmaster Mariya Muzychuk, becoming one of the youngest chess players ever to defeat a former World Champion.

Last month, she became Britain’s youngest-ever women’s chess champion at the 2026 British Chess Championships in Coventry. In the faster formats of the game, Bodhana is already the UK Open Women’s Blitz Champion and joint British Women’s Rapid Champion.

The sequence of records is worth reading in its entirety not because each individual achievement needs further emphasis but because the cumulative picture it paints — World Under-8 Girls Champion in 2022, youngest to represent England in any sport, youngest to earn a WGM norm, youngest female player to beat a grandmaster, youngest WIM, youngest British women’s champion, now youngest WGM — describes a player whose relationship to record-breaking has become something close to routine.

The American Whose Record She Broke: Carissa Yip

The player whose previous record Sivanandan displaced when she beat Peter Wells in Liverpool in August 2025 was Carissa Yip — a Chinese American chess player from Massachusetts who was herself a prodigy of significant note. At ten years of age, Yip was the youngest female chess player ever to beat a grandmaster; this record was surpassed by Bodhana Sivanandan in August 2025. Yip went on to compete in the U.S. Women’s Chess Championship multiple times and remains one of the strongest American women’s players of her generation. The passage of records between an American player of Chinese heritage and a British player of Tamil Indian heritage reflects the degree to which the frontier of women’s chess prodigy talent has increasingly emerged from Asian and South Asian diaspora communities.

What Comes Next: The IM, and Beyond

Becoming a woman grandmaster means she has attained the highest female-only title in chess. But as she made clear in Samarkand, the WGM title is not where she intends to stop.

The International Master title — which is open to all players regardless of gender — is the next formal landmark on her path. Her success over the weekend has earned her a second International Master (IM) norm, which takes her another step closer to becoming an international master. Three norms are required; she now has two.

Beyond that lies the Grandmaster title — the highest in chess, open to all, held for life — a title that has never been held by an eleven-year-old of either gender. The youngest player ever to earn the Grandmaster title was Sergey Karjakin, who achieved it at the age of 12 years and seven months in 2002 — a record that still stands as of today’s date.

Whether Sivanandan will challenge that record is a question that chess analysts are beginning to ask with increasing seriousness. The latest tournament continues a meteoric rise for Sivanandan, who became the youngest female player to defeat a grandmaster in August 2025.

“I’m happy to do it, but I want to keep going and keep making history as well, instead of just stopping here,” she told FIDE.

The history, as best anyone can tell, has barely begun.