One hundred chess grandmasters and counting

What is also heartening about India’s century in chess is that the sport’s reach is widening away from the traditional nerve centres like Tamil Nadu. Mayank Chakraborty, India’s 94th GM, was not just Assam’s but also North East India’s first-ever grandmaster, while Shrivatri was Madhya Pradesh’s first GM

The world has been dazzled by the talent of India’s golden generation of Gukesh, Vaishali, Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi and Divya Deshmukh. The generation that will follow is already showing signs that it’s ready for the big stage.

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3 min readNov 14, 2026 06:50 AM IST First published on: Nov 14, 2026 at 06:50 AM IST

With Anuj Shrivatri becoming a grandmaster on Sunday, India crossed the 100-GM threshold in chess. Not many countries in the world can boast of those numbers. It was another sign of the nation’s rising heft in the sport. In recent years, India has had an 18-year-old world champion in the form of Gukesh, two Olympiad teams that have swept their way to gold medals, and R Vaishali is set to fight for the Women’s World Championship title early next year, the most prestigious title in women’s chess.

Having 100 grandmasters in a country is not just a mere statistic. It will mean that the ecosystem of the sport itself will grow, because many of these grandmasters will soon branch out into coaching or will become seconds (aides who help with strategies for openings), just like their predecessors like Srinath Narayanan, R B Ramesh, Vishnu Prasanna and Shyam Sundar M — all of them grandmasters who turned into elite coaches early in their careers. Those four men have given the country the likes of Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Vaishali, Arjun Erigaisi and more by moulding them early on. It was thanks to the ready expertise of these grandmaster-turned-coaches that India went from having 65 grandmasters just before the pandemic in 2020 to having 100 in only six more years. The pace establishes India’s stature as one of the fastest-growing nations in the sport.

Chances are that India will blitz its way from 100 to 200 grandmasters. The world has been dazzled by the talent of India’s golden generation of Gukesh, Vaishali, Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi and Divya Deshmukh. The generation that will follow is already showing signs that it’s ready for the big stage. One only needs to look at the recent Chola Chess tournament in Chennai to get a measure of the potential of that generation. Young stars like Viresh Sharnarthi, Aarit Kapil, Sarbartho Mani and Madhvendra Pratap Sharma, who are not even international masters, a title just below the grandmaster level, held strong grandmasters to draws and occasionally prevailed. What is also heartening about India’s century in chess is that the sport’s reach is widening away from the traditional nerve centres like Tamil Nadu. Mayank Chakraborty, India’s 94th GM, was not just Assam’s but also Northeast India’s first-ever grandmaster, while Shrivatri was Madhya Pradesh’s first GM.