FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2015–16

The FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2015–16 was a series of five chess tournaments exclusively for women, which determined one player to play in the Women's World Chess Championship 2018, a 10-game match against the knockout world champion.

This was the fourth cycle of the tournament series. Top ranked player was Hou Yifan, who won the previous three editions of the Grand Prix, but had withdrawn participation after playing in the first tournament. The overall Grand Prix was won by Chinese player Ju Wenjun, who overtok Koneru Humpy at the last tournament. Koneru Humpy thereby finished overall runner-up for the fourth time.

Originally the Grand Prix was scheduled as a 4-event tour. However, at the March 2016 FIDE Presidential Board meeting, a fifth event was then added, which replaced the Women's Knockout championship. Sixteen women were selected to compete in these tournaments, though with the expansion the total became twenty, along with extras to replace the withdrawn Hou Yifan. Each player agrees to a contract to participate in exactly three of these tournaments. The players must rank their preference of tournaments once the final list of host cities is announced and the dates are allocated to each host city.

Each tournament is a 12-player, single round-robin tournament. In each round players score 1 point for a win, ½ point for a draw and 0 for a loss. Grand Prix points were then allocated according to each player's standing in the tournament: 160 grand prix points for first place, 130 for second place, 110 for third place, and then 90 down to 10 points by increments of 10. In case of a tie in points the Grand Prix points are shared evenly by the tied players.

Players only count their three best tournament results. The player with the most Grand Prix points is the winner. FIDE reserved the right to change locations and dates and increase the tournaments to six (6) and players to eighteen (18), each player in four (4) tournaments. Eventually they expanded the Grand Prix but not in the contractual manner specified, deciding to add a fifth stop at their Moscow presidential meeting (March 2016), with approximately 20 players in all taking part, keeping 3 tournaments per player.

Players invited base on qualifying criteria were:

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