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.
Contents
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.
Participants
Players were seeded by their Elo ratings (January 2006 list), 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).
Final match
A fourth game was not played because Xu Yuhua led by two points after game three.