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The 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament, after its 10th round, continues to be the GM Javokhir Sindarov Show as Sindarov leads the showdown by two points. The Uzbek star scored his record-breaking sixth win against GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and can now boast the most wins in the modern Candidates format (since 2013). All the other games—GM Anish Giri vs. GM Hikaru Nakamura, GM Wei Yi vs. GM Fabiano Caruana, and GM Andrey Esipenko vs. GM Matthias Bluebaum—ended in draws.

Pragg’s Sister Vaishali Leads the Women ’s Event 

 A quiet draw for GM Vaishali Rameshbabu against GM Anna Muzychuk was enough to give the Indian star the sole lead in the 2026 FIDE Women's Candidates after her co-leader GM Zhu Jiner rejected a draw by repetition and went down in flames to GM Bibisara Assaubayeva. The other decisive result was a first win for GM Aleksandra Goryachkina, who inflicted a second loss in a row on GM Divya Deshmukh.

In the FIDE Candidates Chess Tournament 2022, GM Ian Nepomniachtchi made history when he finished with 9.5/14, winning the event with a round to spare. He won five games and drew nine. Sindarov is now on course to break that record, if he draws the next four games. He preferred not to think of that and said, "I'm very close, but still I have two games with Black and very important games. I'm just trying to not think and play good chess mostly.”

Asked at the press conference what his pre-tournament expectations were, Sindarov said he and his coach would have considered +1 by the halfway point as "very good." Of course, he laughed as he said this.

He was also asked to address the growing #Windarov trend, but he laughed in a shoulder-shrug way and said, "It doesn't matter." As the rich got richer, Giri was unable to keep pace with the leader's velocity.

Since round nine, Anish Giri has been the closest trailer to the leader, but he is still two points behind. Nakamura attempted to spice things up with the uncommon 3...h6 in a Queen's Gambit Declined, but neither player could prove an advantage. The computer shows an unlikely missed chance with 23.Ng5! Rde8 24.Nf3!! for a slight advantage, but evidently that turned out to be outside the scope of human  play.