The rookie professionals making their debuts on the World Snooker Tour during the 2025/26 season

With the new top-flight campaign just around the corner, at least 13 cueists are set to make their debuts as fully-fledged professional players having each earned a two-year tour card in recent months via several different amateur event pathways. This number could swell to 14 depending on the outcome of the 2025 African Snooker Championship that will be played and completed in Morocco later this month.

Four players from the new contingent graduated from the Asia-Oceania Q School held in Bangkok last month.

Thailand’s Chatchapong Nasa secured a tour card on home soil this way; the 27-year-old reached the last 32 of the World Snooker Federation Championship earlier this year.

The other three graduates are from China: Liu Wenwei, Xu Yichen, Zhao Hanyang.

Liu is 21-years-old and made the quarter-finals of the Asia-Pacific Open Championship held in Australia earlier this year. Zhao is aged 25 and has been a regular on the Chinese domestic circuit in recent years.

38-year-old Xu is currently this upcoming season’s oldest rookie. On his Q School debut this year, he won a tour card in hugely dramatic fashion in the second and final event, ousting Babar Masih in the final round 4-3 on the final black ball.

Xu did feature at the 2016 Shanghai Masters as a wildcard where he lost his opening match 5-0 to Stephen Maguire. That encounter was particularly memorable as Maguire made a maximum 147 break and two other centuries.

Three professional newbies emerged from the UK Q School held at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester: Mateusz Baranowski, Fergal Quinn, Connor Benzey. Full report on all this year’s Q School graduates here.

Baranowski is 27, and the reigning Polish national snooker champion - a title he has won four times. In 2014 he reached the semi-finals of the world under-21 championship where he lost to eventual champion Hossein Vafaei. In the other semi-final was current world champion Zhao Xintong.

The Pole went into Q School in very good form. As well as winning his national crown, Baranowski made the last four of the 2025 World Snooker Federation Championship in Morocco, and the quarter-finals of the 2025 European Amateur Championship in Turkiye. As an invited amateur, Baranowski defeated Amir Sarkhosh 10-2 in the opening qualifying round of the world professional championship in April before losing by the same scoreline to Ishpreet Singh Chadha in the following round.

While Baranowski came through the first event, both Quinn and Benzey progressed from the last chance saloon of event two.

Northern Irishman Quinn has also played in several professional tournaments in recent years as an invited amateur.

The 25-year-old is a former national under-21 champion, and like Baranowski, he reached the semi-finals of the WSF Championship in January, where he lost to eventual title winner Gao Yang, 4-2. Two years before that, Quinn made the quarter-finals of the same competition, but in Australia when he bowed out to teenager Stan Moody who already had a pro tour card having won the junior event only a few days before.

Englishman Benzey could be an x-factor this season. The 23-year-old already has several match victories from professional events on his CV. Only last season, he won two matches and drew 2-2 with Mark Williams in a Championship League group, narrowly missing out on qualification for the next phase as Williams - who he was tied with on points - had compiled a bigger break on the day.

Benzey has reached the last 64 of both the English Open and Shoot Out.

Having been agonisingly close in the past on several occasions, Austria’s Florian Nuessle finally got over the line and realised a dream of becoming a professional snooker player a few months ago.

The 23-year-old earned his maiden tour card after winning a Q Tour global playoff event in Turkiye.

Nuessle is no stranger to top tier competition, though, and has regularly been invited to World Snooker Tour events. Last season he won two qualifying matches at the UK Championship, and two at the Welsh Open which put him through to the main venue, televised stages in Llandudno where he was defeated by Mark Williams on the main TV table.

However, his deepest run came at the Shoot Out where he won four matches to reach the last eight. Not many rookie professionals can say they’ve already been to a ranking event quarter-final.

Nuessle enjoyed a very distinguished amateur snooker career, winning the eight consecutive most recent editions of the Austrian national championship, the 2022 world under-21 championship, and the 2024 European 6 reds championship, as well as several other big pro-am tournaments.

A two-time European amateur championship semi-finalist, Nuessle thrice got to within a match win of turning professional in the past. He lost to Ben Mertens in the final of the 2022 European under-21 championship, and to Ashley Carty in the final of the 2023 Q Tour playoff event.

The most painful disappointment, though, would have surely been a 4-3 deciding frame loss to Dean Young in the final round of the final event of 2023 Q School - a tie he was 3-1 up in.

But Nuessle can now put all that behind him; he appears well-equipped in the experience department to deal with the step up.

Yan Pengcheng and Lan Yuhao have qualified for the pro ranks via the Chinese Billiards and Snooker Association circuit.

28-year-old Yan is a multiple-time national ranking event winner, while teenager Lan was a semi-finalist at the 2023 world under-21 championship. Both Chinese players have previously appeared in professional competition in their homeland as invited wildcards.

It has been a while since there was a Canadian representative on the professional tour - and a lot longer since the country’s glory days of the 1980s - but Sahil Nayyar will soon be waving the Maple Leaf on snooker’s premier circuit.

Originally from India, but living in Ontario, 36-year-old Nayyar claimed his tour ticket after defeating Brazil’s Fabio Luersen 5-1 in the final of the 2024 Pan American Championship last October. Recently, Nayyar also won the Canadian national title.

Ireland’s Leone Crowley will join compatriots Aaron Hill and Ken Doherty on the World Snooker Tour for the 2025/26 term having won the 2025 World Snooker Federation Junior Championship in January.

The 19-year-old has won Irish national titles at under-12, 16, 18 and 21 levels, and he made the final of the 2022 European under-18 championship.

Perhaps the biggest fanfare for this season’s intake of rookies has been saved for 14-year-old Michal Szubarczyk, who is set to make history by becoming snooker’s youngest-ever professional player.

Poland’s Szubarczyk was already being strongly talked about in snooker circles having won the 2024 IBSF World under-21 championship in India as a 13-year-old.

In March, in Antalya, Turkiye, Szubarczyk won both the EBSA European under 16 and under 18 championship titles. A few days later, he went all the way to the final of the open-aged European amateur championship - a title won by players such as Mark Allen and Luca Brecel in the past.

Szubarczyk was denied the title by Liam Highfield, but as Highfield had already won a tour card via the Q Tour playoffs held at the same venue a few days before, the allocated World Snooker Tour professional ticket was awarded to the runner-up, as per the rules, and he and his family accepted it.

Soon to be joining fellow Poles Antoni Kowalski and Baranowski in the big time, Szubarczyk got a taster of life there during the recent world championship qualifiers where he took to task well in a close 10-8 defeat to Young in the first round.