11-YEAR-OLD BECOMES YOUNGEST WOMAN GRANDMASTER IN CHESS

Bodhana Sivanandan, an 11-year-old from north-west London, became the youngest Woman Grandmaster in chess history after picking up her third and final norm while playing for England at the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. She knew she had locked up the title on September 26, 2026, but she did not realize she had broken the age record until someone told her, The Express Tribune reported.

“But now that you’ve told me, I’m happy,” she said in an interview with Lichess.

The Olympiad ran from September 15 to September 27, 2026. Sivanandan scored eight points from 11 games, and she did it on board one for England, a spot normally handed to a team’s strongest player, according to The Times.

Asked by a FIDE reporter whether she felt the pressure, she was refreshingly unbothered. “Not really, I just tried to enjoy it, especially because this is my second Olympiad,” she said. “It kinda felt very similar to the last one except I was playing on a different board.”

No player has ever earned the title younger, the BBC reported. The Woman Grandmaster title is the highest women-only title in chess, and it is held for life. The previous record belonged to Kateryna Lagno, who got there at 12, The Independent reported.

She had already cleared the 2,300 rating threshold before the final norm came through.

Her plans for what comes next do not include a victory lap. “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, Dexerto reported.

How a toy chessboard turned into a record

It all started with a bag of hand-me-downs. A family friend who was moving to India gave her father some toys and books, and Sivanandan went digging.

“One of my dad’s friends was going back to India, and he had a few toys and books, and he gave them to us. And in one of the bags, I saw a chessboard, and I was interested in the pieces. I wanted to use the pieces as toys. Instead, my dad said that I could play the game, and then I started from there,” she said in a 2025 BBC interview.

She climbed quickly. At the 2024 Chess Olympiad in Budapest, she became the youngest person ever to represent England internationally in any sport, Dexerto reported, citing the BBC. She is also Britain’s youngest women’s chess champion.

At 10, she became the youngest female player to earn the Woman International Master title, BBC Newsround reported. In August 2025, she became the youngest female player to beat a grandmaster, defeating Peter Wells at the British Chess Championships, CNN reported.

Through all of it, she still goes to school full-time, and she has to catch up on schoolwork after trips to tournaments. She said she likes the travel, and that chess and class feed each other.

“I like travelling and also because I do full-time school as well, it links to loads of school subjects, so it’s really useful there as well,” she told FIDE.

The Olympiad also earned her her second International Master norm, the BBC reported. Her first had come at the Dole Open in France in July 2026, The Indian Express reported.

The third arrived on October 23, 2026, at the European Club Cup in Budva, Montenegro. Playing board one for She Plays To Win Lionesses A, she beat Sweden’s WIM Viktoria Johansson in the final round and finished with 5.5 points from seven games, according to Chess.com.

That completed the requirements for the open International Master title, making her the youngest female player to do so. She was 11 years, seven months and 16 days old, and the result also pushed her rating past 2,400.