Zhao Xintong becomes first Chinese player to win top honour at World Snooker Tour awards

For the first time in his career, Zhao claims the WST Player of the Year award for the recently finished 2025/26 professional snooker season.

His first full season back on snooker's top flight, Zhao - who was wearing the world crown following his heroics at the Crucible in 2025 - won four titles throughout the campaign, more than any other player.

After a sedate start to the term from Zhao, he collected his opening honour in the Middle East at the 2025 Riyadh Season Championship invitational where he defeated Shaun Murphy, Judd Trump, and then Neil Robertson in the final.

In the new year, Zhao won his first ranking title since his world championship glory, denying compatriot Zhang Anda in the final in Hong Kong to become the 2026 World Grand Prix champion - the first leg of the three-pronged Players Series.

Only a few weeks later, Zhao continued his winning streak with glory at the Players Championship in Telford, getting the better of John Higgins in the title tie.

And at the Manchester Central at the start of April, Zhao completed an unprecedented clean sweep of Players Series title victories as he brushed aside all those in front of him, dispatching world number one Judd Trump 10-3 in the final. Zhao ended that tournament with a dominant frames aggregate of 30-8.

Across this season's Players Series - which players can only qualify for via the one-year ranking list - Zhao finished with a perfect record of 12 wins from 12 matches.

Zhao became the latest victim of the 'Crucible Curse' when he was eliminated by Murphy in the quarter-finals of the 2026 World Snooker Championship, but he ends the season in a career-high world ranking position of number three, and is within striking distance of being world number one at some point over the next several months.

In total across the 25/26 campaign, Zhao scooped more than £1 million in competition earnings, and came top of this season's centuries chart with 82 tons - 15 clear of second-placed Mark Selby.

The 29-year-old was also named as the Journalists' Player of the Year, too.

Zhao is the first Chinese player to win the WST Player of the Year crown; since its introduction in 2011, nine players have joined the prestigious roll of honour, with Trump the most decorated with four awards to his name (2019, 2020, 2021, 2025).

Titles were spread about during the 2025/26 professional season; Zhao and Wu Yize (International Championship, World Championship) were the only cueists to lift multiple ranking event trophies.