The World Xiangqi Championship explained: who runs it, how it is played, and every men's and women's champion from Singapore 1990 to Shanghai 2025.
The World Xiangqi Championship is the top international title in Chinese chess. It is run by the World Xiangqi Federation, began in Singapore in 1990 and is usually held every two years. Nineteen editions have been played, and in 2025 Vietnam's Lại Lý Huynh became the first player from outside China to win the men's title.
That last fact says a lot about the event. Until 2025 the men's individual title, the one people mean when they talk about the world champion, had gone to a Chinese player at all 18 previous editions. The women's title has been more open, with winners representing Singapore, Canada, Italy and the United States as well as China. Below is how the championship works, followed by every winner and host city.
Who organises it
The championship belongs to the World Xiangqi Federation (WXF), the umbrella body for national xiangqi associations around the world. The federation is actually a little younger than its own event. According to the WXF, a preparatory committee was formed in October 1988, and the first two championships, in Singapore in 1990 and Kunming in 1991, were staged while that committee was still laying the groundwork. The federation itself was founded on 6 April 1993, during the third championship in Beijing.
The championship moves from host to host, which is why it has travelled from Southeast Asia to Paris, Munich, Vancouver and Houston. China News Service described it in 2025 as an important traditional event of the WXF, held every two years after its 1990 debut. The rhythm has been broken twice. The 1990 edition was followed by another in 1991, and after Vancouver in 2019 there was a three-year gap before Kuching in 2022, with Houston following only a year later.
How the tournament is played
The heart of the championship is a Swiss-system tournament at standard time controls, with separate men's and women's sections. Team medals are not decided by a separate team event. Instead, each country's results in the individual sections are combined. At the 2022 championship in Kuching, for example, the men played nine rounds and the team ranking added together the placings of each team's two best men. That is how Vietnam took the men's team gold that year without winning the individual title.
The men's section has recently added a final. In both 2023 and 2025 the top two players after eight Swiss rounds met in a final game while the rest of the field played a ninth round. In Houston in 2023 that final was drawn and had to be settled by a rapid tiebreak.
Other events have come and gone around the main sections. A rapid competition was introduced in 2022. Under-16 and under-12 youth sections now run alongside the senior event, and the 2025 championship was staged together with the fifth World Youth Xiangqi Championship. For many years there was also a separate division for players from outside China, later from outside China and Vietnam, which the WXF says was last held in 2019. Japan's Kazuharu Shoshi, a shogi professional, won that division five times.
Men's champions, 1990 to 2009
Lü Qin won the first championship in Singapore in 1990, and Zhao Guorong took the second in Kunming in 1991. Xu Tianhong won in Beijing in 1993. Lü Qin then won twice in a row, in Singapore in 1995 and in Hong Kong in 1997.
Xu Yinchuan won in Shanghai in 1999, and for the next decade the two Guangdong players traded the title. Lü Qin won in Macau in 2001, Xu Yinchuan in Hong Kong in 2003, Lü Qin in Paris in 2005 and Xu Yinchuan in Macau in 2007. Zhao Xinxin won in Xintai, in Shandong province, in 2009, with Vietnam's Nguyễn Thành Bảo finishing second.
Lü Qin's five men's titles are still the record. Hu Ronghua, the most decorated player in the history of China's national championship, never won it. The WXF's own list of past results shows him finishing second to Lü Qin in both 1990 and 2001.
Men's champions since 2011
Jiang Chuan won in Jakarta in 2011, and Wang Tianyi won in Huizhou in 2013. Zheng Weitong took the 2015 title in Munich, the second championship held in Europe after Paris. Wang Tianyi won again in Manila in 2017, and Xu Chao won in Vancouver in 2019.
Wang Tianyi completed his set of three titles in Kuching, Malaysia, in 2022. Meng Chen won in Houston in 2023, beating Lại Lý Huynh on that rapid tiebreak. Then, in Shanghai in 2025, Lại Lý Huynh beat China's Yin Sheng in the final. Eleven different men have now held the title.
The 2025 breakthrough
Fifty-one players entered the men's standard event in Shanghai. Lại Lý Huynh went through eight rounds unbeaten, with five wins and three draws, and finished level on points with China's Yin Sheng and Meng Fanrui. He reached the final on tiebreak score and won it with the black pieces. Before that day China had won all 18 men's individual titles.
China still took the men's team gold through Yin Sheng and Meng Fanrui, and Tang Dan won the women's title for the fourth time. Counting the youth events and an open tournament held at the same time, China News Service reported 183 players from 25 countries and regions in Shanghai.
Women's champions
Singapore's Teo Sim Hua won the first women's title in 1990. Hu Ming of China won in 1991 and 1993, Huang Yuying, representing Canada, won in 1995, and Lin Ye, representing Italy, won in 1997.
Jin Haiying won in 1999 and Wang Linna in 2001. Guo Liping won back-to-back titles in 2003 and 2005, followed by Wu Xia in 2007 and You Yingqin in 2009.
Tang Dan won in 2011 and 2013, Wang Linna took her second title in 2015, and Tang Dan won again in 2017. Jia Dan of the United States won in Vancouver in 2019. Zuo Wenjing won in 2022 and Tang Sinan in 2023, before Tang Dan's fourth title in Shanghai in 2025. No other woman has won it more than twice.
Champions and the match-fixing scandal
Any list of recent champions now needs a footnote. Since 2024 the Chinese Xiangqi Association (CXA) has punished dozens of players after an investigation into the buying and selling of games, and several world champions are among them. Wang Tianyi won his three world titles, in 2013, 2017 and 2022, before the CXA banned him for life in September 2024 and stripped his grandmaster title. In September 2025 a Hangzhou court convicted him, Zhao Xinxin and four other grandmasters over the scandal.
In January 2025 the CXA banned Zhao Xinxin and Zheng Weitong for life, along with Wang Yang, and gave lesser penalties to 38 other people, including a six-month suspension for Meng Chen. In April 2026 a third round of penalties banned Xu Chao for life and suspended Jiang Chuan for five years, with his title revoked. These are CXA sanctions, and the world championship results above are listed as they were recorded at the time.
Watching the next one
The WXF publishes results and game records from its championships on its website, and the recent finals are worth replaying for anyone who wants to see how the strongest players handle the opening and the endgame. If you would rather try the positions yourself, XiangqiPlay has 5,000 engine-proven mate puzzles to work through, and a free account lets you play the computer at any of its eight levels, from Easy to God.
XiangqiPlay Team
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