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Can Ju Wenjun Win 5th World Championship?
We're all set for the 2025 FIDE Women's World Championship. Photo: Anna Shtourman/FIDE.

Can Ju Wenjun Win 5th World Championship?

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Colin_McGourty
Staff
| 35 | Chess Event Coverage

Defending Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun is striving to become only the fourth player in history to win the title five times as she takes on challenger and former champion GM Tan Zhongyi in the 2025 FIDE Women's World Championship in Shanghai tomorrow. The €500,000 ($540,000) match will be played over 12 games, with the second half taking place in Chongqing. Ju starts with the white pieces.

Ju and Tan, born within months of each other and now ranked second and third on the women’s rating list, will be playing their second world championship match.

Let’s look at some of the talking points.

  1. Can Ju Wenjun Make History?
  2. Deja Vu In China
  3. Who’s The Favorite?
  4. Ju Has Been There And Done It All Before
  5. Tan Is A Tough Opponent For Ju And At Her Peak
  6. It’s Likely To Go Down To The Wire
  7. We’ve Got A Great Commentary Team

1. Can Ju Wenjun Make History?

Ju first won the title against Tan in 2018, and then did something only one other player, GM Xie Jun, has ever managed—she defended the title in a 64-player knockout. Match wins against GMs Aleksandra Goryachkina (2020) and Lei Tingjie (2023) followed, meaning that so far in her seven-year reign Ju has won the title four times. If she makes it a fifth she’ll be doing something only three players have previously achieved.

Vera Menchik, the first women’s world champion, is out on her own as an eight-time champion after dominating women’s chess from 1927 to her death in 1944. After that we come to Georgian chess legends GMs Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze, who both won five times and together held the women’s title for almost 30 years (check out the full history of the women's chess title).

2. Deja Vu In China

China is currently a superpower in women’s chess, and for the second match in a row both players are Chinese. It’s also the second match in a row that will start in Shanghai and end in Chongqing, since Tan, like the previous challenger Lei, comes from Chongqing, while Ju was born in Shanghai.

For the third time in a row, the women's match is split between two cities. Image: FIDE.

The format is identical to the one used in 2023, with 12 games at the most standard classical time control. The first player to 6.5 points will win 60% of the €500,000 ($540,000) prize fund, which is also identical to the prize fund in 2023—and almost five times below the $2,500,000 GMs Ding Liren and Gukesh Dommaraju played for in the 2024 FIDE World Championship match in Singapore.

The one slight change in the format this year is that the tiebreaks, if the match ends tied 6-6, start with four 15-minute games instead of the 25-minute games planned in 2023.

It’s also, of course, deja vu, since Tan and Ju played for the title back in 2018, with everything ultimately decided in a streak of five decisive games in a row.

2018 Women's World Championship

Name Fed Rating Perf. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Score
Ju Wenjun 2571 2557 ½ 1 1 0 1 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ 5.5
Tan Zhongyi 2536 2532 ½ 0 0 1 0 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ 4.5

Back then Tan was the defending champion, but this time roles are reversed.

3. Who’s The Favorite?

Of 14 players FIDE asked for their favorite for the match during the Women’s Grand Prix events in Monaco and Nicosia, 10 chose Ju, with the others saying it was equal or hard to say. IM Stavroula Tsolakidou said “I guess I’ll root for Tan,” but didn’t deny Ju was the favorite.

On the other hand, only GM Alexandra Kosteniuk went so far as to say “definitely Ju,” with others, such as GM Viswanathan Anand, giving Ju only “a slight edge.” Most predict a tough match, with GM Elisabeth Paehtz, for example, commenting:

“Objectively speaking it would be crazy to say it’s Tan, because Ju is more stable, but if Tan is in her moment, like she was in the Candidates, she can win.”

If Tan is in her moment, like she was in the Candidates, she can win.

—Elisabeth Paehtz

Let’s look at some reasons to believe in both players.

4. Ju Has Been There And Done It All Before

Ju is just four months older than Tan and has been significantly higher-rated for most of their careers. The four-time classical women’s world champion, two-time rapid women’s world champion, and reigning women’s world blitz champion, is one of just six female players ever to have been rated over 2600.

Her peak rating of 2604 came after a 2731-performance in an open field in the 2017 Gibraltar Masters, and she’s continued to play in open events much more regularly than her current rivals. A recent spectacular success was in Wijk aan Zee in 2024, when she beat top-10 star GM Alireza Firouzja.

She lost five games in that event, but did draw against both Ding and Gukesh.

Ju Wenjun triumphed in the first women's edition of Norway Chess. Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.

As well as her success in the women’s world championship, Ju also won the inaugural Women’s Norway Chess in 2024 and was in fine form in New York at the end of the year. Apart from winning the blitz, she took silver in the rapid, where she won her most recent game against Tan, and in some style.

5. Tan Is A Tough Opponent For Ju And At Her Peak

When Tan won the 2024 FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament by 1.5 points ahead of the trio of GMs Koneru Humpy, Lei, and Vaishali Rameshbabu, winning five games and losing just one, she made a surprising declaration:

"To be honest, coming into this tournament I did not have high expectations. Right now competitive chess is not my number-one priority, because I have my own club in China and I have this chess coaching career."

Right now competitive chess is not my number-one priority.

—Tan Zhongyi after winning the 2024 Women's Candidates

Perhaps the lower expectations helped, however, since Tan was in top form and led from start to finish. Her spectacular third win, against GM Anna Muzychuk, showcased her tactical and unpredictable style (with analysis by GM Rafael Leitao).

Tan gained 19 rating points in Toronto and kept climbing, beginning 2025 at a career peak rating of 2561. More significantly, however, that was exactly the same rating as Ju’s, and although Tan slipped slightly after results in the Women’s Grand Prix, she goes into the match neck-and-neck with Ju.

Tan Zhongyi dominated the Women's Candidates in Toronto to qualify for the match. Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.

Historically as well, Tan has been a tricky opponent for the calmer, more positionally-focused Ju. Although Ju leads with 12 classical wins to 10, by our calculations (it’s tricky tracking down all their early games in China!), the advantage is based on two Chinese League wins for Ju in 2019—the last time they played classical chess against each other.

When Tan won the women’s world championship title in 2017 in Tehran she began the event as the ninth seed, and in the Quarterfinals defeated the top seed—none other than Ju—1.5-0.5. She pushed Ju in their 2018 match, and could easily have been the opponent again in 2023. She took the lead against Lei in the final of the 2022-3 FIDE Women's Candidates before Lei stormed back to win three of the next four games.

6. It’s Likely To Go Down To The Wire

If the players’ current ratings and history didn’t suggest a close match, we also have the evidence of Ju’s reign as world champion. She’s won four titles, but each match has gone down to the final game. A draw was enough to defeat Tan in the match in 2018, while in the knockout in the same year she needed to win the last classical game to force tiebreaks against GM Kateryna Lagno.

History suggests we should expect the match to go all the way to game 12, and perhaps beyond. Photo: Anna Shtourman/FIDE.

In 2020 Ju lost the final classical game to Goryachkina, which again meant tiebreaks, while in 2023, with the match level, she beat Lei in the last game to clinch overall victory.

Both players will be armed to the teeth, and while teams are usually kept at least partly secret, we can make some guesses based on recent history. Ju had GMs Pentala Harikrishna and Wei Yi on her side in 2023 (who seconded Gukesh and Ding respectively for the 2024 match), while at the Candidates Tan had help from GMs Zhou Weiqi, Yu Shaoteng, and Jeffery Xiong.

Ju will start with the white pieces, after picking the white queen in a modest opening ceremony.


7. We’ve Got A Great Commentary Team

We’ll have video from the venues and will be broadcasting the match live on the Chess24 Twitch and YouTube channels from 3 a.m. ET / 09:00 CEST / 12:30 p.m. IST. We’ll start with the best female chess player of all time, GM Judit Polgar, who is joined by nine-time British Women’s Chess Champion IM Jovanka Houska. From the third game on, Jovanka will be joined by two-time Asian Women’s Chess Champion IM Irene Sukandar.

Don’t miss all the action!   

The 2025 FIDE Women's World Championship is the most important women's over-the-board event of the year. The defending women's world champion, GM Ju Wenjun, faces the challenger, GM Tan Zhongyi, to see who will be crowned world champion. The championship starts on April 3 in Shanghai and boasts a €500,000 ($540k) prize fund.

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Colin_McGourty
Colin McGourty

Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.

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