What is the Home Nations Series in Snooker?

The Home Nations Series – which has featured every season on the professional snooker circuit since 2016/17 - consists of four ranking events open to all professional tour card holders.

Making up the Home Nations Series are the English Open, Northern Ireland Open, Scottish Open and Welsh Open.

The Welsh Open was already an established, annual event on the professional circuit since 1992, and the Scottish Open was previously played between 1998 to 2003, although both the English Open and Northern Ireland Open were new tournaments to the sport’s top tier.

The trophies for each Home Nations Series event are named in honour of snooker greats from those respective nations:

The Steve Davis Trophy (English Open)
The Alex Higgins Trophy (Northern Ireland Open)
The Stephen Hendry Trophy (Scottish Open)
The Ray Reardon Trophy (Welsh Open)

Home Nations Series events have previously used a flat draw, meaning all the players start in the opening round, although there have been preliminary rounds to cater for more than 128 entries and local amateur wildcards.

However, HNS events will use a tiered format in the 2024/25 season.

Who has won the most Home Nations Series events in snooker?

From the 32 completed Home Nations Series events to date, Judd Trump is the most decorated player with six title wins (two English Opens and four Northern Ireland Opens).

Five other players have won multiple Home Nations Series events: Mark Selby, Neil Robertson, Mark Allen, Gary Wilson and Stuart Bingham.

No player has yet to win all four Home Nations Series events, although Robertson is the closest to achieving that feat having claimed three and needing only the Northern Ireland title to complete the set.

Multiple-time Home Nations Series event winners:

Judd Trump: 6 (2-4-0-0)
Mark Selby: 4 (2-0-2-0)
Neil Robertson: 3 (1-0-1-1)
Mark Allen: 3 (0-2-1-0)
Gary Wilson: 3 (0-0-2-1)
Stuart Bingham: 2 (1-0-0-1)

(English Open - Northern Ireland Open - Scottish Open - Welsh Open)

The above list does not include title victories when the Welsh and Scottish Opens were standalone events and not part of the Home Nations Series.

Liang Wenbo won the first Home Nations event at the 2016 English Open in Manchester.

In total, four players have won their maiden ranking event titles in the Series: Liang, Mark King (2016 Northern Ireland Open), Jordan Brown (2021 Welsh Open) and Gary Wilson (2022 Scottish Open).

In the 2020/21 season, Ronnie O’Sullivan reached three back-to-back Home Nations events but lost them all. In the following 2021/22 season, John Higgins did the same.

During the early editions of the Home Nations Series there was a one-million-pound bonus for any player that won all four events within the same season. This extremely unlikely feat was never achieved.

On four occasions, a player has won two Home Nations events within the same season: Mark Selby (2019/20), Judd Trump (2020/21) and in 2023/24 both Trump and Gary Wilson did so.

Since the 2021/22 season, all four Home Nations events have been part of the European Series, with ranking points counting towards that particular order of merit.

Home Nations Series Maximum 147 Breaks

A total of 20 maximum 147 breaks have been made in Home Nations Series events:

2016 English Open: Alfie Burden
2016 Northern Ireland Open: John Higgins
2017 English Open: Liang Wenbo
2017 Scottish Open: Cao Yupeng
2018 English Open: Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, Ronnie O’Sullivan
2018 Scottish Open: John Higgins
2019 Welsh Open: Neil Robertson, Noppon Saengkham
2019 English Open: Tom Ford
2019 Northern Ireland Open: Stuart Bingham
2020 Welsh Open: Kyren Wilson
2020 Northern Ireland Open: Judd Trump
2020 Scottish Open: Zhou Yuelong
2021 Scottish Open (qualifying round): Xiao Guodong
2021 Northern Ireland Open: Mark Allen
2022 Scottish Open: Judd Trump
2022 English Open: Mark Williams
2023 Welsh Open: Shaun Murphy

2024 Welsh Open: Gary Wilson

(Players in bold denotes it was their first 147 in professional competition)

John Higgins and Judd Trump have each made two maximum breaks in Home Nations Series events.

Breakdown of 147s made in Home Nations Series events:

English Open: 6
Scottish Open: 5
Welsh Open: 5
Northern Ireland: 4