Will Qatar host a professional snooker event next season?

As well as discussing the prospects of the World Snooker Championship’s future home during his trip to the Crucible Theatre on Wednesday, Matchroom Sport President Barry Hearn talked about the overall professional snooker landscape and a potential new tournament in Qatar next year.

In a Sheffield press conference, Hearn laid out the opportunities and rewards on offer for players on next season’s professional circuit and beyond. The 75-year-old reiterated his hopes for a one-million-pound first prize to the winner of the world championship, and explained that overall prize money for the Masters - snooker’s most prestigious invitational event - will go up next year.

Since then, World Snooker Tour have officially announced that the prize fund for the London-based tournament will increase from £725,000 to £1,015,000 (£290,000 increase) and the winner will bank £350,000 - up from £250,000 earlier this year.

Hearn also briefly mentioned there will be an event in Qatar, due to take place between February and June in 2025.

Whist this comment was not an official announcement, a new event in the country certainly stacks up given the interest that the Middle East is showing for snooker. Only at last year’s world championship Hearn talked about how Qatar had made inquiries about the sport’s blue riband event.

If a professional event in Qatar does materialise, it would be the latest in a string of new tournaments on the top tier calendar. Only this season we have seen a new ranking event with the Wuhan Open and the invitational Riyadh Season World Masters of Snooker in Saudi Arabia.

Next season (2024/25), two new ranking events are already set to be introduced - the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters and the Xi’an Grand Prix in China.

Snooker in the Middle East is not a new thing. The Dubai Classic ranking event took place between 1989 to 1994 and the Bahrain Championship ranked competition was held in 2008.

Qatar has hosted the IBSF World Amateur Snooker Championships for several years and in the wider cuesports world it was the home of the World 9-Ball Championship between 2010 to 2019.

In recent years, Qatar has expanded its sports hosting portfolio with events including the FIFA Football World Cup and races on the Formula One circuit.