Bodhana Sivanandan, an 11-year-old chess prodigy, has become the youngest player to earn the Woman Grandmaster (WGM) title. Bodhana achieved the milestone during the ongoing 46th Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. She surpassed Kateryna Lagno to become the youngest-ever Woman Grandmaster. Lagno, who has played for both Ukraine and Russia, had achieved the feat back in 2002 at the age of 12 and held the record for more than two decades.
Who is Bodhana Sivanandan?
Bodhana is a schoolgirl who lives in northwest London's Harrow. She was born on March 7, 2015, to Indian parents who moved to the UK in 2007. The Indian-origin chess prodigy started playing chess during the COVID-19 pandemic and was initially fascinated by how the pieces looked.
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"I was fascinated by how the pieces looked, especially the knight and the queen, and I wanted to use them as toys outside of chess," she had said in one of her previous interviews, as reported by GB News. She learned to play chess by watching YouTube tutorials during the early days.
She participated in her first tournament at the Harrow Chess Club in July 2021 and later won all her matches at the European Schools Championship a year later at the age of 7.
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In August 2025, Bodhana became the youngest female chess player ever to beat a Grandmaster, defeating 60-year-old Peter Wells in the last round of the 2025 British Chess Championship in Liverpool at the age of 10.
In August 2023, she was also invited by then-UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to 10 Downing Street during the announcement of a funding plan to support chess in the UK.
In August 2026, Bodhana became Britain's youngest-ever women's champion at the British Chess Championship by defeating 14-year-old WGM Trisha Kanyamarala.
