Q Tour Europe snooker returns with bumper entry as ex-professionals headline season opener

Organised by the sport’s governing body - the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association - the European Q Tour is snooker’s premier amateur circuit.

Open to all players who don’t currently have professional status, the Q Tour provides a direct pathway to the World Snooker Tour.

Seven regular events are set to be played this 2026/27 season - three held in England and four on mainland Europe - with the roadshow starting at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds for the opening tournament that will be held between August 27-30.

A ranking points system is in place, and at the end of the campaign, whoever is top of the standings will be awarded with a two-year professional tour card for the 2027/28 and 28/29 terms.

The next 16 highest-placed players on the end-of-season rankings list (to include each event champion) will qualify for the Global Q Tour playoffs where they join cueists from outside of Europe who qualified from their regional Q Tour structures. These global playoffs carry three further two-year World Snooker Tour passes.

Each Q Tour Europe event has a £30,000 prize fund, with £6,000 going to the eventual champion. As well as the financial and tour card incentives, top performing players from this season’s series are understood to also earn invites to the 2026 UK Championship and 2027 World Championship qualifying rounds.

It was from this avenue how 2024/25 Q Tour Europe order of merit winner Zhao Xintong - despite technically being of amateur status at the time - created history when claiming the 2025 World Championship title.

Who has entered the first Q Tour event?

The first European leg of the season in Leeds has attracted a bountiful entry of 143 players from 25 nations. This amount of contestants is bigger than any event from last term.

And the competition at the famous Northern Snooker Centre is set to be fierce, with a plethora of well-known ex-professionals in the line-up aiming to reclaim their professional stripes.

Perhaps the most familiar name of all is two-time ranking event champion and former world number 12 Robert Milkins who was relegated from the top tier in the spring, and is without a tour card for the first time since 1998.

Another ex-top 16 star in unfamiliar surroundings is two-time World 6-Reds Champion Mark Davis, whose unbroken 35-season spell on the professional circuit came to close, like Milkins, after the 2026 World Championship.

Fellow experienced cueists Barry Pinches and Rory McLeod - who have both won minor-ranked professional accolades in the past - are also in the draw, as are youngsters Bulcsu Revesz and Robbie McGuigan who both recently lost their tour cards.

All regular Q Tour Europe events use a straight knockout format, with best of seven frames matches all the way through.

Last season’s order of merit winner was Jamie Clarke who won back-to-back stops in England and Bulgaria, as well as featuring in three further quarter-finals.

For the draw, results, and live scores from Event One, visit snookerscores.net here.