The 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament, after its 10th round, continues to be the GM Javokhir Sindarov show as he leads 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.
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.
Round 11, after Friday’s rest day, is on Saturday, April 11, starting at 8:45 a.m. ET / 14:45 CEST / 6:15 p.m. IST.
FIDE Candidates: Sindarov Sacs Piece, Wins Again
Sindarov scored the only win in round 10 and is close to wrapping up the tournament.
Candidates Round 10 Results
Sindarov now leads Giri by two points with four rounds to go, with Caruana another full point behind in third.
Candidates Standings After Round 10
Barring a dramatic unraveling, Sindarov is expected to win the event and qualify for the world championship match. As his closest pursuer, Giri, was unable to make headway against Nakamura, Sindarov plunged ahead with a daring piece sacrifice against Praggnanandhaa. “I was ready for a big fight today,” he said at the press conference.
I was ready for a big fight today.
—Javokhir Sindarov
Sindarov 1-0 Praggnanandhaa
Sindarov started with an opening snafu. Playing too quickly, he took 11 seconds to play 9.Bg3, not the move in the file, which was 9.Be5. Fortunately, the position was still fine, but he sank to an eight-minute think before continuing.
GM Arturs Neiksans jumped in with a joke, suggesting we were in for a roller coaster. White had two pawns for a piece and play against the enemy king.
Javokhir to himself before the game: “I’ll just play something solid, I can draw all of my games until the end of the tournament”. One hour later… pic.twitter.com/MqZgprQSV3
— Arturs Neiksans (@GMNeiksans) April 9, 2026
A jovial Sindarov said after the game, “My team will really hate me after this move, but okay, it works very well, so it’s fine!” But he added that, to him, the middlegame position was a “two-results game.” He added, “If you play some one wrong move, it seems like White can get a good advantage here.” One wrong move was exactly what happened in our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao has analyzed below.
There, Leitao writes, “Sindarov is now virtually the tournament champion. More than that, his performance is extraordinary, and the level of play he’s shown has few parallels in the history of chess.”
It’s a fantastic “recovery” for a player who doesn’t even need to win at this point. In the previous round, he threw away an opportunity against Bluebaum, but his coach had some encouraging words.
“I had a big stress because yesterday I didn’t win a completely winning position. That’s why my coach tells me, if you deserve this title you will get it; if you don’t, we will work a lot to become strong. Don’t think about the result, just play your chess.”
– Javokhir Sindarov pic.twitter.com/SpaLtoIVSN
— chess24 (@chess24com) April 9, 2026
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.
Giri ½-½ Nakamura
Since round nine, 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.
You can watch Nakamura’s video recap too.
Shortly after that game, the Esipenko-Bluebaum game ended in a draw. Esipenko attempted a sideline against the German’s ironclad Petroff Defense, but wasn’t able to break it. Bluebaum secured a ninth draw in 10 rounds, and Esipenko’s in last place with 3.5 points.
Wei and Caruana, despite featuring the Alekhine Gambit in the French Winawer Defense (4.Ne2), went to an endgame where neither side gave way. Caruana is three points behind the leader, and Wei is a half-point further back.
Sindarov will play his penultimate black game against Caruana in round 11, after the rest day. Giri, the closest, will have White against Esipenko.
FIDE Candidates: Round 11 PairingsÂ
FIDE Women’s Candidates: Vaishali Sole Leader As Assaubayeva Beats Zhu
It was a slow burner of a round, but ultimately both Assaubayeva and Goryachkina picked up wins.
Women’s Candidates Round 10 Results
The Women’s Candidates remains wide open. Vaishali has become the sole leader, but two players trail by half a point. Today’s winners join GM Kateryna Lagno only a point off the lead, while Divya is still within striking distance despite two losses in a row.
Women’s Candidates Standings After Round 10
Vaishali is synonymous with wild swings in the Candidates, after she lost four games in a row and then won the last five in Toronto in 2024, but this time round she took the sole lead with four rounds to go with the minimum of fuss. A mildly uncomfortable position fizzled out into nothing when Muzychuk delayed her f4-pawn push.
That result seemed as though it would leave the status quo of two leaders intact, since Assaubayeva vs. Zhu was a balanced game that could have ended in a draw at multiple moments. Zhu pushed too hard, however, and met a familiar fate at the hands of her Kazakh opponent.
Assaubayeva 1-0 Zhu
Assaubayeva’s second win of the Women’s FIDE Candidates came against the same player as the first, and she pointed out: “I’m just happy that I finally won a game! She’s a very strong player, but our last five games ended with me winning.”
I’m just happy that I finally won a game!
—Bibisara Assaubayeva
Earlier Assaubayeva had been angry with herself over what she called “a stupid mistake” and was ready to take a draw, but Zhu overpressed and ended up helpless against a passed a-pawn. It became a question of how many queens we’d get to see on the board, with GMs Judit Polgar and David Howell spotting a beautiful checkmate with four on the board. In fact Assaubayeva had seen that line, and told herself, “If it’s not winning, I’m just a very unlucky person!”
In the end only three queens were on the board when Zhu resigned.
That was a blow for Zhu, but she’s only half a point behind Vaishali with four rounds to go. Assaubayeva is also completely back in the hunt, one point behind the leader, where she’s joined by a player scoring her first win only in round 10: Goryachkina.
Divya 0-1 Goryachkina
Things have soured fast for Divya, who in round eight defeated Muzychuk to take the co-lead. Since then she’s lost to Vaishali and now a painful game against Goryachkina which for a long time seemed sure to end in a draw. It all came down to an innocuous-looking minor-piece endgame.
Goryachkina and Assaubayeva are joined by Lagno, who made a draw against the struggling GM Tan Zhongyi.
There was briefly a chance for more.
So absolutely anything can happen in the Women’s event. One game to watch will be Goryachkina-Vaishali, since Goryachkina can catch the leader with a win—which would delight the chasing pack! Â
FIDE Women’s Candidates: Round 11 PairingsÂ
Colin McGourty contributed to this report.
You can watch the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament on Chess24’s YouTube and Twitch channels. The games can also be followed from our Events Page.Â
The FIDE Candidates Tournament is the most important FIDE tournament of the year. In the Open and Women’s events, eight players play each other twice for the right to challenge the FIDE World Champions Gukesh Dommaraju and Ju Wenjun to a match for the title.
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