Individual medals at the 2026 Chess Olympiad: who won on each board and what performance rating measures

Short answer

The Samarkand Olympiad awarded 30 individual medals, three per board in each event, on performance rather than score. In the open, Nodirbek Abdusattorov had the highest performance, 2869, on board one; in the women's event, Zhu Jiner, with 2638. This page gives both full lists, explains how performance is calculated and why it can put 9 out of 10 behind 9.5 out of 11, and picks out the results furthest above rating: Frederik Svane, Gleb Dudin, Lu Miaoyi, Savitha Shri and Cuba's Ineymig Hernández Gil.

Event: 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad

How this was compiled: Checked on 29 September 2026, with the Olympiad over on 27 September. Medals, ratings, number of games and performances come from the official board-prize lists published by chess-results for the open and women's events. Individual scores were counted from the official PGN broadcast on Lichess and checked against the number of games in the official list.

The essentials in a few lines

• Olympiad individual medals are awarded per board (1st to 4th and reserve), on performance, with a minimum number of games; no 2026 medallist played fewer than 8.
• In the open, the golds went to Abdusattorov (2869), Wei Yi (2798), Frederik Svane (2796), Ihor Samunenkov (2720) and Gleb Dudin (2738, reserve); Uzbekistan won three individual medals.
• In the women's event, the golds went to Zhu Jiner (2638), Alice Lee (2572), Lu Miaoyi (2576), Elnaz Kaliakhmet (2486) and Savitha Shri (2569, reserve).
• Lu Miaoyi scored 9.5 out of 11 unbeaten, rated 2371 with a 2576 performance: 205 points above her own rating, the biggest gap among the women's gold medallists.
• Ineymig Hernández Gil of Cuba, rated 2157, scored 8 out of 9 unbeaten on board four and took silver, the only individual medal for Latin America.

How the individual medal is decided

Intuition says the best player on a board is the one who scored most. The rule says something else, and with reason. In an eleven-round Olympiad with nearly two hundred teams, two players on the same board can face opponents whose average ratings are three hundred points apart. Scoring 8 out of 10 against 2300 and scoring 8 out of 10 against 2600 are different results, and performance is the way of saying by how much.

Performance is the rating a player would need for that score to be the expected result against those opponents. You start from the opponents' average rating and add a difference that grows with the percentage scored: 50% gives the average itself, 75% gives about 190 points more, 90% close to 370. The minimum number of games exists so that a player with three wins from three games does not take the medal with a performance that says nothing. In the 2026 lists, the medallist with the fewest games played 8.

The effect shows on the women's fifth board. Savitha Shri of India scored 9 out of 10 and took the reserve gold with 2569. Lu Miaoyi scored 9.5 out of 11 on China's board three, a slightly lower percentage, and had a higher performance, 2576, because she faced stronger opponents. Both won gold, each on her own board.

Open: the fifteen medallists

Board two produced the tightest race of the Olympiad: Wei Yi and Jorden van Foreest tied on 2798, and Sindarov finished a point behind on 2797. On board one, Turkey's Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, rated 2716, scored 8 out of 10 unbeaten with a 2839 performance, silver behind Abdusattorov.

The two golds furthest above rating went to players from teams that missed the podium. Frederik Svane of Germany played all 11 rounds on board three, scored 8.5 unbeaten and exceeded his 2655 rating by 141 points; one of his wins was over Yakubboev, in Uzbekistan's only defeat. Gleb Dudin of Hungary was rated 2560 and scored 8 out of 10 as reserve, a 2738 performance, including the win over Gukesh in the final round.

Gukesh played all 11 rounds on India's board four, scored 8.5 and took silver, two performance points behind Samunenkov. Aronian, bronze on the same board, played 8 games for the USA.

Women: the fifteen medallists

Zhu Jiner played 9 of the 11 rounds on China's board one and scored 7 unbeaten. Silver went to the American Carissa Yip (2601, 8 out of 10) and bronze to Humpy Koneru (2543, 7 out of 10), who in the final round beat Nana Dzagnidze with the knight fork 19.Nf6+.

Alice Lee of the USA scored 8.5 out of 10 unbeaten on board two and gave the Americans the country's only individual gold of the Olympiad. Mariam Mkrtchyan of Armenia took silver after 9 out of 11 without a loss, rated 2374 with a 2544 performance.

India had a medallist on four of the five boards: Humpy, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal and Savitha Shri. It is the individual counterpart of a team campaign that ended in bronze on tiebreak.

The results furthest above rating

Ineymig Hernández Gil was rated 2157, the lowest among the thirty medallists in both lists after Vesna Mihelic (2152). She played 9 games on Cuba's board four, scored 8 unbeaten and had a 2443 performance, silver behind Elnaz Kaliakhmet. It was Latin America's only individual medal in either event.

Lu Miaoyi scored 9.5 out of 11 on China's board three, unbeaten, rated 2371. She played every round, the only women's gold medallist to do so, and China kept her in the line-up even in the matches against the teams fighting for the podium.

A note on method for anyone comparing these numbers with their own history. Tournament performance swings far more than rating, because it rests on ten or eleven games. A performance 200 points above rating does not mean the player now plays 200 points better; it means that, in those games, the result was that of someone 200 points stronger.

• Ineymig Hernández Gil (Cuba): rated 2157, 2443 performance, +286.
• Lu Miaoyi (China): rated 2371, 2576 performance, +205.
• Savitha Shri (India): rated 2382, 2569 performance, +187.
• Gleb Dudin (Hungary): rated 2560, 2738 performance, +178.
• Vladimir Hamitevici (Moldova): rated 2446, 2617 performance, +171.

What performance says, and what it does not

The temptation, looking at a list of performances, is to read it as a strength ranking. It is something else: a summary of eleven games. Abdusattorov had 2869 because he beat Rapport, Ding Liren, Caruana and Martirosyan and lost to nobody, and that result stands regardless of the rating he came in with and of what he does in his next event.

For a club player, the same calculation has a practical use. Working out your own performance at a weekend tournament, rather than only looking at the rating change, shows whether the result came from strong opponents or from generous pairings. Rating moves slowly and blends many events; performance isolates one, which is why it is good for diagnosis and poor for prediction.

Frequently asked questions

Update log

• 2026-09-29 — First published: both official board-prize lists, with scores counted from the official PGN.

Sources

• 46th Chess Olympiad 2026 Open — board prizes — chess-results
• 46th Chess Olympiad 2026 Women — board prizes — chess-results
• Uzbekistan, China Win 2026 Samarkand Chess Olympiad — Chess.com
• Fireworks, drones and champions: Samarkand's grand Olympiad finale — FIDE

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