Abhimanyu Mishra scored his third GM norm in Budapest to become the youngest chess grandmaster in history on Wednesday.

In the final round, he defeated the 15-year-old Indian GM Leon Luke Mendonca with the black pieces, securing a performance rating higher than 2600 over nine rounds.

The 12-year-old player from New Jersey in USA scored his third GM norm in Budapest, having already crossed the required 2500 Elo rating barrier. Mishra broke GM Sergey Karjakin’s record that has stood for 19 years.

While it took Karjakin 12 years and 7 months to secure the grandmaster title in 2002, Mishra took just took 12 years, four months, and 25 days to obtain the gold standard in chess.

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Mishra scored both his first and second GM norms in Budapest too, at the April Vezerkepzo tournament and the May 2021 First Saturday tournament.

Only five players in history managed to get the title before their 13th birthday.

As US Chess reports, “This is not Mishra’s first record shattered. He was the youngest master in U.S. history at nine years and two months, and the youngest International Master ever at 10 years, nine months, and three days, breaking the record previously held by GM Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa by 17 days.”

The youngest chess GMs in history

No. Player Country Age
1 Abhimanyu Mishra USA 12 years, 4 months, 25 days
2 Sergey Karjakin Ukraine* 12 years, 7 months, 0 days
3 Gukesh Dommaraju India 12 years, 7 months, 17 days
4 Javokhir Sindarov Uzbekistan 12 years, 10 months, 5 days
5 Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu India 12 years, 10 months, 13 days
6 Nodirbek Abdusattorov Uzbekistan 13 years, 1 month, 11 days
7 Parimarjan Negi India 13 years, 4 months, 22 days
8 Magnus Carlsen Norway 13 years, 4 months, 27 days
9 Wei Yi China 13 years, 8 months, 23 days
10 Raunak Sadhwani India 13 years, 9 months, 28 days
*Karjakin was still Ukrainian when he got his title.