During 2016, Zhou was awarded the FIDE Master (FM) title and also qualified for the Woman Grandmaster (WGM), the latter of which was not approved until the following year. She was the first Canadian woman to earn either of those titles. At the Stockholm Chess Challenge in March, she won her last-round game against Toms Kantāns, who was then an International Master (IM) rated 2496 and is the highest-rated player she has defeated. Later in the year, Zhou earned all three norms for the WGM title in three successive tournaments beginning in July. The first and third events were both in Kecskemét where she had also done well the previous year. She scored 7½/10 in the Chess in Kecskemét July IM tournament and then 7/10 in the Chess in Kecskemét July GM tournament. In-between, she travelled to Novi Sad in Serbia and had her best performance among these three events, scoring 7/9 at the IM Riblje Ostrvo 3 tournament, a ½ point more than what was needed for the norm. With these three results, Zhou climbed to a career-best rating of 2367. She also became one of the top 100 women in the world by ranking and one of the top 10 girls for the first and only time in her career, ranking at exactly No. 100 among women and at exactly No. 10 among girls. Zhou's last big result of the year was winning the Canadian Women's Championship by a point, a victory that qualified her to compete at the Women's World Chess Championship the following year.