The 100% Club; who has made a perfect start to the new snooker season?

Whilst the sport's top stars have yet to enter the fray with their opening assignments held over to the main venues and television lights later this summer, the 2026/27 professional snooker season is well underway after the China Open and Wuhan Open qualifying rounds which took place earlier this month.

Only eight players who featured at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester managed to qualify for the main draw of both ranking events, finishing with perfect records.

The most unexpected of these is China's Yao Pengcheng who a couple of months ago finished his rookie season on snooker's top flight ranked number 101 in the world.

Yao won all six of his matches in Leicester, navigating three rounds in both tournaments to book trips back to his homeland. Amongst that sequence of results were victories over the world numbers 17 (Thepchaiya Un-Nooh: 6-3 win) and 18 (Jack Lisowski: 5-0 win).

The 29-year-old is through to the last 32 of both ranking events in the Far East; last season, he made the same stage in competition once.

One of the hottest young properties on the World Snooker Tour is Chang Bingyu, and the 23-year-old from China has made a fast start to the fledgling campaign.

Currently ranked 48th in the world after just one season back in the big-time - but provisionally ranked 23rd on the end-of-season projections - Chang won all four of his matches across both events, dropping a total of only nine frames in the process.

Three other Chinese cueists remain on 100% after their opening outings: Pang Junxu (3/3), Liu Hongyu (4/4), and Jiang Jun (4/4).

World number 58 Liu - only 22-years-old, but now in his fourth year in snooker’s premiership - lost just five frames in his four match victories. Guaranteed at least £14,500 from these first two events, such early results will likely take a bit of pressure off Liu in terms of preserving his tour card come the end of this season.

Jiang began to make some waves on the circuit last season by appearing in his first two ranking event quarter-finals, and going so close to qualifying for a Crucible debut. The 20-year-old - who has an unorthodox style on the table - seems to be getting more comfortable on the top tier, and crafted a century break in each of his four recent qualifying wins.

Following a frustrating several months on the Tour, Hossein Vafaei ended last season on a high by reaching the quarter-finals of the World Championship for the first time. And Iran’s number one has continued that momentum into the new cycle, passing all three of his initial tests and relinquishing only five frames en route.

Welsh youngster Jackson Page will be aiming to make his big career breakthrough in the near future, and he gave himself a couple more opportunities to do so by qualifying for both Taiyuan and Wuhan.

Currently ranked 35th in the global standings, Page - who made two ranked quarter-finals last year - won all four of his recent Mattioli meetings.

Former Championship League Ranking Event winner David Gilbert (3/3) also has an unblemished record, so far.

The qualifying results for the 2026 China Open can be viewed here, and the ones from the 2026 Wuhan Open are here.