Meet The Top Contenders For The Women’s Figure Skating World Title

Prague—With the Olympic cauldron barely cooled after the Milan-Cortina Games, the women’s singles competition at the 2026 ISU World Figure Skating Championships will open at 6 a.m. EST on Wednesday, March 25, and the chase for gold has never felt more wide open. Olympic champion and defending world titlist Alysa Liu has stepped away from competition to capitalize on professional opportunities and a social-media following that now tops 10 million. Russia’s Adeliia Petrosian, sixth in Italy, remains barred by the ISU’s blanket ban on Russian athletes. Their absences clear the lane for a new world champion, and the field is stacked with skaters eager to seize the moment.

Kaori Sakamoto, the newly crowned Olympic silver medalist and a three-time world champion, arrives as the presumptive favorite. The 25-year-old Japanese star has already announced that these championships will be her competitive swan song, adding emotional weight to what she hopes will be a fourth global title. If Sakamoto shows any vulnerability, the most likely beneficiary is her 17-year-old compatriot Ami Nakai, whose daring triple axel and buoyant presentation electrified the Olympic short program and briefly put her in the lead at Milan-Cortina. Nakai ultimately captured bronze in Italy and could upgrade that medal in Prague.

The top American hope is Amber Glenn, whose fifth-place Olympic finish and reputation as one of the sport’s greatest triple-axel technicians make her a podium threat if she delivers two clean skates. Glenn, 26, is seeking her first world medal after placing fifth at last year’s championships. She will be joined in the U.S. delegation by 18-year-old Isabeau Levito, a 2024 world silver medalist who dazzled coaches in Tuesday’s practice by cleanly landing a new, high-difficulty jump combination. Levito’s 12th-place result in Italy was an outlier driven by a single shaky free skate; a rebound in Prague could easily land her on the podium.

Japan’s depth does not end with Sakamoto and Nakai. Mone Chiba, the 2025 world bronze medalist and fourth-place finisher at the Olympics, has the technical arsenal and competitive maturity to capitalize on any slips above her. Estonia’s Niina Petrokina, fresh off historic Grand Prix and European titles, could become the first Estonian woman ever to win a world medal. South Korea’s Haein Lee, the 2023 world silver medalist and Four Continents champion, brings elegance and consistency, while teammate Jia Shin, still just 18, used a personal-best free skate in Italy to hint at bigger results ahead. Georgia’s Anastasiia Gubanova, the 2023 European champion, rounds out the list of skaters capable of disrupting the established hierarchy.

With the short program set to begin live on Peacock, the women’s event promises five days of high-stakes drama that will close the book on the 2025-26 season and, in the case of Sakamoto, perhaps on an illustrious career.