In about four months’ time, that young star will seek to add another feather to his growing stardom when he turns up as the only Indian at the 2026 Candidates.
The Women’s Candidates will feature three Indians, but Pragg will be the only face from the country in the elite group of eight men that will fight to earn the right to play reigning champion D Gukesh for the World Championship title next year.
This will be Pragg’s second Candidates appearance, after also competing in the 2024 edition that featured three Indians and was won by Gukesh. Pragg finished 5th.
The 20-year-old booked his seat for this Candidates table in style. His qualification was confirmed earlier this week as the runaway winner of the 2025 FIDE Circuit. It summed up Pragg’s year that has been – an epitome of consistency – in contrast to 2024.
“Last year, he was playing too much,” GM RB Ramesh, his long-time mentor, said. “He was living out of a suitcase. Fatigue sets in, and the freshness is gone. There is no time to introspect and make corrections. He was just going with the flow, mechanically. At some point, your heart is not in it.”
Ramesh added: “It was only in the last couple of months that he had a breather. We had some honest discussions with each other, where both of us said what we felt. And we got some clarity on how we wanted to go. That has worked out well this year.”
Pragg won the Tata Steel Masters, Superbet Chess Classic Romania, UzChess Cup Masters and London Chess Classic Open, and finished second in the Stepan Avagyan Memorial and the Sinquefield Cup.
A really good first half, according to Ramesh, after which came a slight dip with below-par outings at the Grand Swiss and the World Cup in Goa. A last-minute choice of playing the London Chess Classic Open after the World Cup earned him a tied-first place that pinned his qualification officially.
As far as form and confidence go heading into the Candidates, Pragg is right up there. And he believes he has the ability to make a mark in that eight-man field.
“I will try to focus on everything and try to prepare well for it,” Pragg told PTI. “I am just going to take one game at a time. It is too far-fetched to think about winning already. Of course, I want to do it – that’s the goal and I think I can do it. I have the ability, so I will just try to give my best and we will see how it goes.”
Pragg will head into the Candidates, presumably, as one of the favourites. That can be an unsettling tag to wear, as this year’s World Cup, from where Candidates will have three rather surprise entrants in Javokhir Sindarov, Wei Yi and Andrey Esipenko, showed.
“At the Candidates, the pressure is very high. And so are the stakes. The top guys will be under pressure – Anish (Giri), Pragg, (Fabiano) Caruana. The underdogs will feel less pressure, and they may play well. We saw that in the World Cup,” said Ramesh.
Coping with that pressure, for Pragg and his second Candidates shot, will remain the critical factor.
“We tried some things in the previous Candidates, which I cannot get into in too much detail. Some things worked, some didn’t,” said Ramesh. “But again, diagnosing (the problem) is one thing, being able to deal with it is quite another. We cannot insure players against pressure. This is very difficult to prepare against. But we know that it will be the key.”
