Alexey Alexandrovich Sarana is a Russian chess Grandmaster and the 2018 Higher League of the Russian Chess Championship winner.
Born on August 26, 2000, he achieved his Grandmaster title in 2017. He was predicted to be a leading chess player from a young age after he won the Moscow Under 18 Championships when he was only 12. In 2012, he also tied for the 1st-3rd place in the World Youth Chess Championships – Boys U12.
Sarana later became a bronze medalist in the European and World U16 (Boys) Championships in 2016. A year later he accomplished a significant step in his career by winning the Russian Junior Championship.
In 2018, he won the Higher League of the Russian Chess Championship, defeating very successful competition including Grandmasters Vladimir Fedoseev and Maxim Matlakov. This win qualified him to compete in the Superfinal of the Russian Chess Championship, where he tied for 5th-7th place.
Sarana gained international attention when he won the Prague Chess Festival's Challengers event in 2020. Further achievements of Alexey Sarana include his victory in the 2021 spring Polugaevsky Memorial.