With all the hype on the World Rapid and Blitz Team, I've completely missed our Malaysian players taking part in the world youth. If not for the headlines I saw in https://catur.org/news, this would have been completely missed.

Malaysia has sent a four-player delegation to the World Youth Chess Championship 2026, which is currently ongoing at the Pala Dean Martin Congress Center in Montesilvano.

Located on the beautiful Adriatic coast in the Abruzzo region (near Pescara), it hosts major conferences, concerts, and international gatherings, such as the FIDE World Youth Chess Championships. The center is clean, spacious, and sits just a short walk away from the beach.

As the tournament crosses the halfway mark (heading into the rest day after Round 6), here is the lineup and their latest available performance data:

Open Under-18

• FM Siva Kumar Nirish Kumar (2224): Started the tournament with a win in Round 1 but dropped his Round 2 game playing with the black pieces against Norway's FM Sivert Schanche Torfoss (2328).

Open Under-16

• CM Shen Ree Herng (1971): Secured 1.5 points across the first three rounds. He lost his opener to Azerbaijan's Pasham Alizada (2296), bounced back with a win against Taiwan's Huang Da-Xuan, and drew against Austria's Noah Benedikt (2164).
• Ch'ng Kai Xue Edric (1655): Competing as the 115th seed in the highly competitive U16 section.

Open Under-14

• Rajendran Kartikeyan (1957): Scored 2.5 points in his first 5 rounds (scoring: 0, 1, 1, ½, 0). This placed him around 67th in the standings heading into the second half of the event.

There are no Malaysian representatives in the Girls' sections this year.

SHEN, Ree Herng (1971) – DOTZER, Lukas (2495)
World Youth Chess Championship 2026 – Open 16 (Montesilvano, ITA), 18.06.2026