British schoolgirl becomes chess’ youngest ever woman grandmaster

An 11-year-old chess prodigy has become the youngest woman grandmaster of all time, after a strong performance at the 46th Chess Olympiad. Bodhana Sivanandan from northwest London represented England at the tournament in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, which ended on Sunday. In an interview released on YouTube on Sunday, she told the International Chess Federation (FIDE) that she is keen to “keep making history.” Becoming a woman grandmaster means she has attained the highest female-only title in chess. “I’m happy to do it, but I want to keep going and keep making history as well, instead of just stopping here,” said Sivanandan, who previously became Britain’s youngest female chess champion and the youngest person to represent England at an international tournament in any sport. Asked whether she felt the pressure of playing on the top board at the tournament, Sivanandan said: “Not really, I just tried to enjoy it.” She explained that this was her second Olympiad. “It kind of felt very similar to the last one except I was playing on a different board,” she said. Asked about her love of chess, Sivanandan said she enjoyed the travel involved as well as the sport’s benefit to her school work. “It links to loads of school subjects so it’s really useful there as well,” she said. The latest tournament continues a meteoric rise for Sivanandan, who became the youngest female player to defeat a grandmaster in August 2025. She beat 60-year-old grandmaster Pete Wells at the age of just 10 years, five months and three days, breaking a record set by American Carissa Yip, who was 10 years, 11 months and 20 days old when she defeated a grandmaster in 2019, according to FIDE. In 2024, Sivanandan’s father told the BBC that “nobody at all” in their family had previously excelled at chess. Sivanandan said she picked up the sport during the Covid pandemic when she was five, after one of her dad’s friends gave the family some toys and books. “In one of the bags, I saw a chessboard, and I was interested in the pieces,” she told the BBC. “I wanted to use the pieces as toys. Instead, my dad said that I could play the game, and then I started from there.”