‘No event comes before personal safety’: Why India’s chess legend Koneru Humpy just pulled out of Candidates in Cyprus | Chess News
4 min readMumbaiUpdated: Mar 22, 2026 11:07 PM IST A week after going public with her discomfort at playing in the Candidates tournament in Cyprus, with the war in West Asia still raging, India’s top female chess player, Koneru Humpy, has withdrawn from the prestigious tournament. “After deep reflection, I have taken the difficult decision to withdraw from the FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament,” the Indian Grandmaster wrote on X late on Sunday evening. “No event, no matter how important, can come before personal safety and well-being. Despite the assurances provided, I do not feel fully secure under the current circumstances. This is a painful but necessary decision, and I stand by it.” The global governing body of chess, FIDE, had said earlier this month that it was monitoring the situation on a daily basis. But it was not in favour of shifting the tournament, even though it had an offer from a German entrepreneur Wadim Rosenstein to fund the event in Germany. So far, Humpy was the only high-profile player out of the 16 players …
