The Women's World Chess Championship 2006 took place from March 10–27, 2006 in Ekaterinburg, Russia. For the fourth time, the championship took the form of a 64-player knock-out tournament.
The tournament was won by Xu Yuhua, who beat Alisa Galliamova in the final by 2½ to ½. Notably, Xu Yuhua was three months pregnant at the time.
The players[1] were seeded by their FIDE Elo ratings of January 2006,[2] except that defending champion Antoaneta Stefanova was the no. 1 seed.
Only two players from the top 20 were absent: Judit Polgár (ranked the no. 1 woman in the world – and 14th overall) who instead took part in the open championship events of 2005 and 2007, as well as Hoang Thanh Trang (ranked 11th).
A fourth game was not played because Xu Yuhua led by two points after game three.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Total | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
align=left | 0 | ½ | 0 | — | ½ | |
align=left | 1 | ½ | 1 | 2½ |