After achieving all of her norms for the GM title across 2017 and 2018, Abdumalik became a Grandmaster in 2021 by reaching the 2500 rating threshold in Gibraltar in the last leg of the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2019–21.

[3][6] As a result, she qualified for the under-8 girls' division of the World Youth Chess Championships, where she finished in fourth place with a score of 8/11.

[8] A year later, Abdumalik again participated in the under-8 girls' World Youth Championship, this time in Vũng Tàu in Vietnam, and won the gold medal.

[10] After working with Peregudov through 2011, Abdumalik spent a year at the ASEAN Chess Academy in Singapore training with Zhang Zhong, a Singaporean Grandmaster (GM).

[11] She was directly awarded the Woman FIDE Master (WFM) title at age 10 as a result of her silver medal in the under-10 girls' division at the 2010 World Youth Championship in Greece.

[2][12] A year later, she was directly awarded the Woman International Master (WIM) title as a result of her silver medal in the under-20 girls' division of the 2011 ASEAN+ Age Group Championships in Indonesia.

[12][14] At the ASEAN Championships, she scored 6½/9 to tie with the winner Võ Thị Kim Phụng and the bronze medallist Chelsie Monica Ignesias Sihite.

[2][16] A series of large rating jumps culminated in Abdumalik winning her second World Championship title at the end of the year, this time in Brazil in the under-12 girls' division.

[21] Outside of the world championships, Abdumalik earned her first Woman Grandmaster (WGM) norm at the Alushta summer tournament in Ukraine, where she scored 7/11 and was undefeated against players with an average rating of 2282.

[11] She entered the Kazakhstani women's national championship and finished runner-up to Guliskhan Nakhbayeva, who won on the tiebreak criteria after they both scored 7/9.

[27][28][29] With this achievement, she earned her second WGM norm and was later named the Best Girl Under-20 at the 1st Annual Asian Chess Excellence Awards.

[22][30] Late in the year, Abudmalik had another big achievement, winning the Brno Open in the Czech Republic as the sixth-highest rated player in the event.

[11][35] During the tournament, she defeated two Icelandic GMs, Henrik Danielsen and Héðinn Steingrímsson, and won six games in total as part of a 6½/10 overall score.

With this performance, she won the bronze medal, having tied with silver medallist Alina Bivol and finishing a ½ point behind the winner Nataliya Buksa.

[49] After she lost rating points in the middle of year, in part from a third-place finish at the Kazakhstani women's national championship,[50] Abdumalik recovered by earning her first GM norm at the World Open in the United States.

As the top seed, she finished a point ahead of second place with 9½/11, clinching the gold medal in the last round with a win against Jennifer Yu.

[57] The following year, Abdumalik earned her final two GM norms in succession at the Karpos Open in March and the Budapest Spring Festival in April.

[60] At the latter event, she was in contention for first place after starting with a score of 6/7 and defeating Tamás Bánusz, a GM rated 2617, but lost her last two games.

[11][72] In March 2020, Abdumalik was invited to participate in the third leg of the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2019–21 at Lausanne as a replacement player after Zhao Xue needed to withdraw due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[73][74][75] Because of the pandemic, Abdumalik did not play another tournament until the women's national championship at the end of the year, which she won, albeit while falling to a rating of 2472.

[76][77] She entered her next tournament, the fourth leg of the FIDE Women's Grand Prix in Gibraltar, needing 28 rating points to meet the threshold for the Grandmaster title.

She won the tournament with a score of 8½/11, clinching victory with a draw in the penultimate round and finishing in clear first by 1½ points.

[81] On May 30, 2022, Zhansaya Abdumalik became the champion of the Women's Bundesliga in chess, having won an early victory with the OSG Baden-Baden team.

She made her debut at the 2014 Tromsø Olympiad in Norway on the third board, behind Guliskhan Nakhbayeva and Dinara Saduakassova, and ahead of Madina Davletbayeva and Gulmira Dauletova.

[89] With Nakhbayeva and Saduakassova both absent, Abdumalik played on the top board ahead of Dauletova, Sholpan Zhylkaidarova, Yelena Ankudinova, and Aisezym Mukhit.

She played on the top board both times at the former event but did not fare well in either occasion, scoring 1½/8 in 2015 and 3½/8 in 2019, losing rating points in both instances.

[104][105][106] Abdumalik has a strong preference for playing 1.e4 (the King's Pawn Game) with the white pieces compared to other opening moves.

[109] Former World Champion Anatoly Karpov attended the opening of the academy, where he and Abdumalik played a four-game speed chess match.