Vietnam Open 2026: Tanvi Sharma Leads India’s Challenge as Prannoy Targets Another Title
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Indian badminton has another tournament to watch this week, and this time the spotlight falls on Ho Chi Minh City.The YONEX SUNRISE Vietnam Open 2026 begins on September 8 and runs through September 13 at the Nguyen Du Gymnasium. The tournament is a BWF Tour Super 100 event with a total prize purse of US$120,000. For India, this is not simply another stop on the calendar. The country arrives with Tanvi Sharma as the women's singles top seed and H.S. Prannoy as the third seed in men's singles, giving India genuine title ambitions in both singles draws.
Can Tanvi Sharma turn the No. 1 seed into another title—and can India's depth produce more than one champion in Ho Chi Minh City?
India Has Serious Depth in Women's Singles
Tanvi is not India's only women's singles threat. Isharani Baruah is seeded third, while Rakshitha Sree Santosh Ramraj and Malvika Bansod are also among the seeded Indian players. Anmol Kharb, Tanya Hemanth, Aakarshi Kashyap and Mansi Singh add further Indian strength to the main draw. That depth could be India's biggest advantage in Vietnam.
If the draw breaks favourably, it is entirely possible for India to have multiple players progressing into the later rounds. The danger, however, is that the same depth can create difficult all-Indian match-ups before the semi-finals.
Tanvi Sharma Starts as the Player to Beat
The biggest Indian storyline in Vietnam is undoubtedly Tanvi Sharma. The young Indian has been rewarded with the No. 1 seed in women's singles, ahead of Vietnam's home favourite Nguyen Thuy Linh. Tanvi's world ranking is currently higher than Linh's, and her position at the top of the draw reflects the progress she has made during 2026. For Tanvi, however, being the top seed brings a different kind of pressure. She is no longer entering tournaments simply as an emerging prospect. She is now expected to win. That expectation is a consequence of her recent breakthrough performances and makes Vietnam an important test of whether she can consistently convert favourable positions into titles.
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Prannoy Brings Experience to India's Men's Singles Challenge
While Tanvi represents India's rising generation, H.S. Prannoy brings years of experience at the highest level. Prannoy enters Vietnam as the No. 3 seed, behind Singapore's Teh Jia Heng and Hong Kong's Jason Gunawan. That makes him one of India's clearest title candidates. But the men's draw is not without danger. Jason Gunawan arrives after defeating world No. 1 Jonatan Christie at the China Masters, while Malaysia's Lee Zii Jia, although unseeded, brings Olympic-level experience and has previously won a bronze medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics. For Prannoy, therefore, the seed offers a favourable starting position—but not a guarantee of a deep run.
Mansi Singh Has Momentum to Build On
Mansi Singh arrives with particularly useful recent experience. She recently reached the final of the Pontianak Indonesia Masters, finishing runner-up in women's singles. That run demonstrated that Mansi can go deep in a BWF-level tournament. Vietnam provides another opportunity to prove that her Pontianak run was not an isolated breakthrough.
India Also Has a Strong Men's Singles Group
Prannoy leads the men's singles challenge, but the Indian contingent is much larger. Kiran George is seeded sixth, while Tharun Manepalli, Rounak Chouhan, Saneeth Dayanand, Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian, Alap Mishra, Manraj Singh, Pranay Katta and Orijit Chaliha are also listed in the main draw, with additional Indians entering qualifying. Because some of these entry details are drawn from the published contingent list rather than a directly retrievable BWF player page, the official BWF draw should remain the final authority for late changes and withdrawals.
India Is Not Relying Only on Singles
The Indian challenge extends into doubles as well. India has entries in men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles, including Viplav Kuvale/Viraj Kuvale, several women's doubles combinations, and mixed-doubles pairs headed by Ashith Surya/Amrutha Pramuteesh, who are seeded third. The mixed-doubles draw could therefore provide India with another realistic route to the later rounds.
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Who Is India's Best Title Hope?
On paper, Tanvi Sharma has the strongest position. She is the women's singles top seed and therefore begins with the clearest statistical route to the title. Prannoy is India's most experienced men's singles contender and carries the No. 3 seed. Isharani Baruah and Kiran George also have seeding protection and therefore realistic quarter-final ambitions. Mansi Singh is the interesting dark horse. Her Pontianak final gives her the confidence of knowing she can reach the championship match at this level.
The Biggest Threats to India
India's strongest obstacles may come from the host nation and neighbouring badminton powers. In women's singles, Nguyen Thuy Linh is the No. 2 seed and has an extraordinary Vietnam Open record. She won the tournament three consecutive times in 2022, 2023 and 2024, before finishing runner-up in 2025. That makes her the obvious home threat to Tanvi.
In men's singles, the presence of Jason Gunawan, Teh Jia Heng and Lee Zii Jia makes the title race considerably more open.
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