Either Koneru Humpy or Divya Deshmukh will earn, amongst other things like Elo ranking points, a prize cheque of $50,000 for winning the ongoing FIDE World Cup for women in Georgia.
The coastal host city is beautiful with it’s lovely food and cheese, and known for its chess mad populace, has seen the emergence of women’s chess stars from India who both made final beating Chinese opponents.
However, a pay disparity is their reality. Prize money for winner at FIDE World Cup (for open section – both men and women allowed) is $1,10,000. For the women’s World Cup winner, it’s $50,000 which is less than half, though both sets of tournaments are organised by FIDE.
Chess remains far from pay parity for both events, and it can only be speculated how this gets justified.
Typically, while an open World Cup has over 200 players, women’s world cup might have just over 100 players. The women’s only event resultantly witnesses one less round.
The prize money at the 2023 World Cup, where R Praggnanandhaa lost to Magnus Carlsen in the final, saw the Norwegian pocket $1,10,000.
However, the time control for both World Cups is the same. And unlike tennis – which too adopted pay parity – both sets of players in open and women’s spend the same time.
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The time control for each game shall be: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting from move 1, as per FIDE rules.
While women can play in the open World Cup if they qualify, many choose not to. At the open World Cup that will be hosted at Goa, women’s World champion Ju Wenjun has a spot guaranteed because she is the women’s world champion. However it remains to be seen if she will opt to travel and contend.
The pay disparity can be gauged from these numbers – the total prize fund for FIDE World Cup (Open) in 2023 was USD 1,834,000 while total prize fund for FIDE Women’s World Cup in 2023 and 2025 combined was USD 676,250, less than a third of the open events.
Chinese star Ju Wenjun earned €300,000 ($ 403,080) after winning Women’s World Championship this year while runner up Tan Zhongyi took home €200,000 ($ 268,720) for losing the world championship. In comparison, Gukesh earned $1,350,000 and Ding Liren took $1,150,000. The open winner (always men) take home three times more the dough than the women.
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At the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 edition, where open and women’s events will happen side by side, the prize fund has been set at one million euros. The total will be split between the Open and Women’s events, with €700,000 allocated to the Open section — evenly divided between the Rapid and Blitz tournaments — and €300,000 for the Women’s section, also split equally.
