4 min readMumbaiUpdated: Mar 23, 2026 01:37 AM 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tournament in Cyprus, with the war in West Asia still raging, India’s top female chess player, Koneru Humpy, has withdrawn from the prestigious tournament.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. late on Sunday, FIDE confirmed that Humpy had pulled out and her spot had been given to Ukraine grandmaster Anna Muzychuk.
So far, Humpy was the only high-profile player out of the 16 players headed to Cyprus to have spoken out about the decision to play in Cyprus, which is an island in the Mediterranean Sea, not too far away from Lebanon and Israel.
Earlier on Sunday, American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura had taken an indirect jibe at the situation in Cyprus, writing on X: “It’s not a good sign when power goes out completely in parts of Cyprus and doesn’t come back for an extended period of time.”
It remains to be seen whether FIDE penalises Humpy for the late pullout. As per their rule book, any player who signs the contract to compete in the Candidates and then pulls out “without providing a satisfactory reason” may be imposed a fine up to 10,000 euros (approximately Rs 10 lakh).
Humpy had spoken about the risk factor of playing the Candidates tournament in Cyprus in the middle of a war between Iran on one side and Israel and the USA on the other. Iran has attacked its neighbours in the Gulf like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Oman in the past month, leading to Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister recently telling journalists that other Gulf states could enter the fray as well, thus widening the radius of the war.
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Humpy’s objection to playing in Cyprus rose from the fact that at the start of the month, there was a drone attack on the RAF Akrotiri base, a British airforce base, which is about 85 kilometres to the east of Cap St Georges Hotel and Resort, which will host the Candidates tournament.
“At the end of the day, you should be in a position to play the game in a peaceful and good atmosphere. Not surrounded by bomb or missile sirens,” Humpy had told The Indian Express earlier in the week.
“I think that should not be the stage for a world-class tournament. You don’t need to be desperate to hold events in such an environment. Definitely, there is tension on the island. Of course, the whole event might go on without any further escalation. Nobody knows what will happen, right? But we do know that there is a risk. My point was that when there is a 10 or 20 per cent risk in playing in Cyprus, what was the necessity to hold the event in that place? When the war started, they already got a sign about what was going on. Intentionally, you should not walk into (a dangerous situation). If you know there might be some chances, you will just try to avoid it.”
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