May 2025 FIDE Ratings: Ivanchuk Is Back!

56-year-old Ukrainian GM Vasyl Ivanchuk played a staggering 27 games in 19 days in April as he picked up 40 rating points to return to the Top 100 on the May 2025 FIDE rating list. GM Wesley So moved up to 11th, while the biggest climber near the top was Reykjavik Open winner GM Parham Maghsoodloo, who gained 22 points to return to the 2700-club.

On the women's list GM Ju Wenjun's crushing victory in the women's world championship saw her grow the gap to GM Tan Zhongyi to 44 points, while GMs Koneru Humpy and Zhu Jiner also rose as they battled it out in the FIDE Women's Grand Prix.

FIDE Classical Ratings (Top 100) | May 1, 2025

As you can see, April was a quiet month of (non-Freestyle) classical chess for the elite, with the top-10 rankings left entirely unchanged. The one significant move was U.S. GM Wesley So climbing to world number-11, which was all down to beating GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in their game from the final round of the German League or Bundesliga. That saw a 10-point swing, with Mamedyarov, who was 11th on the live ratings, sinking to 14th, while also ensuring that Dusseldorf finished the League unbeaten—they'd already claimed the title a day earlier.

I had my first ever experience in Bundesliga which was a lot of good fun, and to top it off I played a small part in their 2025 season Championship. pic.twitter.com/28BfZmriSN

— Wesley So (@WesleySo_) April 28, 2025

Former world number-two So will get a chance to re-enter the Top 10 when the Superbet Chess Classic Romania starts in Bucharest on Wednesday, May 7, with top-10 players GMs Gukesh Dommaraju, Fabiano Caruana, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, and Alireza Firouzja all in action. 

A welcome return to the 2700-club was made by fan-favorite GM Parham Maghsoodloo, who won the Reykjavik Open with 7.5/9. The always ambitious Iranian grandmaster, who in December 2023 was ranked world number-12 and 2742, had dropped as low as 49th and 2664 in January this year, but is now back to 30th and 2706.

The standout performance, however, was a marathon 27 games unbeaten played by former world number-two Ivanchuk, who moved from Iceland (the Reykjavik Open 2025), to Alicante, Spain (Semana Santa San Vicente del Raspeig Costa Blanca 2025), and finally to the Spanish Mediterranean island of Menorca (Menorca Open 2025). The chess legend finished second in the first two tournaments, then won the third in a thrilling final game.

The last couple of minutes as 56-year-old Vasyl Ivanchuk wins the Menorca Open — playing his 27th classical game unbeaten in 19 days! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/CTLzaoDoUw

— chess24 (@chess24com) April 27, 2025

All told, he'd picked up 40 rating points to storm back into the Top 100 (2644, world number-82) at the age of 56.

Ivanchuk isn't the oldest player in the Top 100, since that honor goes to one of his great rivals, GM Boris Gelfand (2652, world number-76), while 15th World Champion Viswanathan Anand, a sprightly 55 years old, is world number-15. When it comes to activity, however, Ivanchuk has no rivals among that illustrious generation! 

We should also mention 29-year-old Chinese GM Lu Shanglei, who played exactly the same schedule as Ivanchuk and picked up 29 rating points to enter the Top 100 for the first time in his career.  

Doing well in a number of relatively small events has seen Ivanchuk, Lu, and Maghsoodloo all climbing the standings of the FIDE Circuit. 

FIDE Circuit 2025 (Top 10) | May 1, 2025

Ivanchuk, for instance, earned 5.83 in Iceland, 5.89 in Alicante, and 12.67 in Menorca. It's early days, but the person who tops the Circuit at the end of this year will qualify for the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament, with up to seven results counting for each player. 

FIDE Classical Ratings (Top 25 Juniors) | May 1, 2025

18-year-old Iranian GM Bardiya Daneshvar enters the Top 10 on the junior list for the first time after scoring 8.5/9 in a Zonal tournament in Iraq that also qualified him for the 2025 FIDE World Cup, while the biggest climber in the Top 25 was 20-year-old Norwegian GM Elham Amar, who picked up points in Reykjavik and also the Grenke Chess Open, despite a last-round loss preventing a fantastic result. 

The most dramatic result in the Grenke Open, however, came for 16-year-old Indian IM Aswath S, who won the tournament with 8/9 and a 2779 rating performance and climbed 48 points for the month to 2515 and number-39 on the junior rating list.   

Aswath got to share a stage with 9/9 man GM Magnus Carlsen.

FIDE Classical Ratings (Top 100 Women) | May 1, 2025

Ju started the women's world championship in Shanghai just six points higher rated than her challenger, and when Tan won in game two she briefly took over as the world number-two.

Ju stormed back, however, to win five of the next six games and her fifth world championship crown, gaining 19 rating points, and opening up a gaping 44-point gap to now world number-seven Tan. Matches can be brutal!

Humpy (+15 points) and Zhu (+16) took full advantage as they finished tied for first in the Indian Women's Grand Prix in Pune, with Humpy taking the title on tiebreaks. Tan and Zhu will both be in action from Tuesday, May 6 as the Grand Prix series comes to a close in Grosslobming, Austria.

Other notable climbers include Serbian IM Teodora Injac (+19), who enters the Women's Top 20 for the first time after winning the European Women's Championship with a nine-game winning streak, and 15-year-old Chinese IM Lu Miaoyi, who played even more rated games than Ivanchuk as she hit a new peak of 2450.

Another young Chinese star, 19-year-old IM Song Yuxin gained 27 points to return to the heights she hit with a growth spurt in 2023.       

It's a similar story for 19-year-old Ukrainian WIM Yelyzaveta Hrebenshchykova, whose 56-point gain, all from finishing on an unbeaten 6/9 at the Grenke Open, was the biggest of anyone in the Women's Top 100, which she entered for the first time.

All data courtesy of FIDE.