By Galo S Mirth
2025 was another dense year in shogi. The title scene stayed intense, but the year also brought major structural and cultural changes, from prize-money realignment to women’s-title milestones and new records by younger players and non-professionals. This review highlights the most important developments from the Japanese shogi world across the 2025 calendar year.
The headline title races in 2025
The top title circuits continued to center on high-profile multi-game matches. In the Meijin line, the 83rd Meijin series was one of the year’s central narratives. The 10th Eiō title match also drew major attention as Takumi Itō and Shintarō Saitō fought through a full five-game format.
These title matches mattered not only as individual results, but also as a barometer for the post-2020 competitive balance at the top: a small core of elite players, many of whom repeatedly meet each other across different title systems in the same year.
Women’s title story: records, rivalries, and a chaotic spring
Women’s shogi produced some of the year’s most compelling and human stories. The 51st Women’s Meijin match went to a deciding game, where Kana Fukuma defended against Tomoka Nishiyama. In the same season, reporting around women’s title events also tracked milestone counts for title appearances and total title wins, underlining how quickly historical leaderboards are still moving in this era.
Another notable point in 2025 was the challenge-change announcement in the Women’s Ōi line, reminding fans how health and scheduling can rapidly reshape a title narrative. For readers outside Japan, 2025 was a good year to see women’s shogi as a top-level circuit in its own right, not just a side story to the main open titles.
Prize-money and system changes that may matter long-term
One of the most consequential institutional moves in 2025 was the public announcement tied to sponsor HULIC: increased prize money in the Kisei ecosystem and related women’s-title framework discussions. The immediate effect was financial, but the deeper implication is strategic. Sponsor decisions can change tournament hierarchy, preparation incentives, and media visibility over multiple years.
The year also included rule and pathway updates affecting promotion routes and participation frameworks. These are easy to miss in casual coverage, but they often shape who reaches top tournaments five years later.
The non-title stories that gave 2025 its character
Year-in-review pieces can become too title-focused, so it is worth recording a few wider developments that made 2025 distinctive:
- The 52nd Shogi Awards cycle set the tone for how the previous competitive year was officially interpreted.
- The 35th World Computer Shogi Championship (WCSC) showed that computer shogi remains a living culture, not just a historical footnote from the Denōsen years.
- Record-type achievements in ranking pathways, including notable results by younger and non-professional participants, kept the year feeling historically open rather than fully settled.
Together, these stories show a shogi ecosystem where professional prestige, women’s competitions, youth pipelines, and computer-shogi communities are all still actively evolving.
Why 2025 mattered
If 2024 looked like consolidation, 2025 looked like recalibration. The elite title tier remained strong, but institutional and cultural layers moved underneath it: sponsor economics, women’s-title visibility, and persistent innovation in computer shogi. That mix is exactly what makes Japanese shogi more than a set of title tables. It is a competitive tradition that keeps adapting without losing its identity.
Sources (Japanese)
- Wikipedia日本語版「2025年度の将棋界」oldid=108358591: https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2025年度の将棋界&oldid=108358591
- Wikipedia日本語版「第83期順位戦」oldid=106444332: https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=第83期順位戦&oldid=106444332
- Wikipedia日本語版「第10期叡王戦」oldid=106991545: https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=第10期叡王戦&oldid=106991545
- Wikipedia日本語版「第51期女流名人戦 (将棋)」oldid=104452384: https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=第51期女流名人戦_(将棋)&oldid=104452384
- Wikipedia日本語版「棋聖戦 (将棋)」oldid=108335563: https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=棋聖戦_(将棋)&oldid=108335563
- Wikipedia日本語版「世界コンピュータ将棋選手権」oldid=106966325: https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=世界コンピュータ将棋選手権&oldid=106966325
- コンピュータ将棋協会「第35回世界コンピュータ将棋選手権」: http://www2.computer-shogi.org/wcsc35/