FIDE Women World Chess Cup 2025 is taking place July 5 – July 29 in Batumi, Georgia, and is one of the major events of The Chess Calendar. A total of 107 participants (increased from the initially announced 103 participants) will compete for 691 000 eur prize fund.
This is the third edition of the FIDE Women’s World Cup. The first one was in Sochi in 2021 and was won by Alexandra Kosteniuk. The second one was in Baku in 2023 and was won by Aleksandra Goryachkina. Now both of them will participate in the FIDE Women’s World Chess Cup 2025 in Batumi together with a strong field of world’s best players.
As the participants list was announced, multiple players from the Women Top 100 have remained out of the competition. Among them was Vaishali. Or so was the case until updates in the players list started appearing unannounced and without explanation at the official website, while random X posts by FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky brought additional confusion in the story (see the timeline here)
It was Vaishali herself who explained, “At Astana now, Came for match against Anna Shukhman for a Wild card spot for Women World cup. It seems now I qualified through Rating spot because of withdrawal of another player Reached Astana yesterday and traveling back home today” followed by a facepalm icon.
OnTheQueenside says, “Vaishali rebukes Emil’s rebuke of my tweet! FIDE really gave the final two wild cards to Begim & Vantika even when Vaishali still wasn’t qualified. Instead of just giving her one of those spots, FIDE sent her to Kazakhstan to play for the sketchy extra wild card!” And goes on to explain:
- Anna already won a World Cup qualifier, but didn’t get a spot!
- This is the 5th qualifier Xeniya is playing this year!
- FIDE ruined Vashali’s birthday! (She traveled to the match, & was replaced by Xeniya)
- FIDE removed Xeniya from Aktobe Open just to play this match.
- If FIDE really wanted to not give this year’s World Junior Champion a World Cup spot this year, why put her in this match?
- Xeniya had also just missed a World Cup spot at the Asian Championship by one place.
- The World Cup regulations don’t say anything about having a wild card match. There are rules to replace any spot. Those rules weren’t followed.
- If you’re going to have an extra wild card for no reason, just give it out. No need for a match.
