Shreyas Royal, 17, becomes youngest British chess champion at Warwick
Shreyas Royal, 17, became the youngest ever British chess champion at the British Championship held at the University of Warwick in Coventry on Sunday. He finished unbeaten on 7.5/9, collected the £10,000 first prize and posted a performance rating of 2688.
A new cohort of teenage players dominated the closing stages of the event: Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, and Supratit Banerjee, 12, also produced headline results while established grandmasters remained in contention. Royal broke Michael Adams’s 1989 record by two months. (Correction: Adams’s 38-year unbeaten record in British Championships was 118 games, not 87 as stated here last week.)
The final standings placed Royal on 7.5/9, with Michael Adams and top-seeded Luke McShane on 7. Harry Grieve, Svyatoslav Bazakutsa (Ukraine), Siva Mahadevan (India) and Simon Williams scored 6.5, while Banerjee and nine others finished on 6. The British women’s title, played within the open competition, ended with Sivanandan and Trisha Kanyamarala (Ireland) tied on 5.5/9; Sivanandan won the playoff 1.5-0.5.
Royal’s tournament included a decisive victory over Luke McShane featuring the move 22 Rd4!, and he was the only unbeaten player among 107 competitors. At 15 he had already become England’s youngest-ever grandmaster by surpassing David Howell’s record, and his career-best results previously included securing his third GM norm in the 2024 British Championship and winning the 2025 Tournament of Peace in Zagreb.
Royal’s FIDE world rating will rise to 2533 after Coventry, the report said, and that increase may restrict his international invitations. The article noted that his title would have earned him a place in the five-man England squad for next month’s 210-team world Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, but the entry deadline was mid-July when his official FIDE rating was below other contenders; GM Dan Fernandez, who bypassed the British Championship, secured selection after winning an international event at Vlissingen in the Netherlands.
Bodhana Sivanandan’s only defeat in nine games came to Royal; she finished one point short of a second IM norm and half a point shy of a world age record women’s grandmaster title, and her round-four win against GM Ameet Ghasi won the Alexander Prize of £100 for the best game in the British Championship. Supratit Banerjee narrowly missed the IM title on Sunday in Coventry but completed the 2400 rating requirement three days later in Sweden, losing round one at the Hotel Stockholm North GM Invitation before winning rounds two and three to secure his third and final norm.
Organisers recorded a record 2,000-plus entry across all events and the English Chess Federation provided the event infrastructure and commentary from GMs Danny Gormally and Nick Pert. The report also referenced two major international events beginning this week: the Sinquefield Cup in St Louis and the Esports World Cup in Paris, where Magnus Carlsen had reached Friday’s quarter-finals alongside Hikaru Nakamura, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Alireza Firouzja.
Next on the calendar are the team Olympiads in Samarkand: the open 210-team world Olympiad and the 190-team women’s Olympiad scheduled for next month in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where selection decisions and top-board placements cited in Coventry will play out.