Draw confirmed for 2026 Tour Championship snooker as Un-Nooh gatecrashes party

The 2026 Tour Championship - the third and final Players Series event of the season - takes place at the impressive Manchester Central between Monday 30th March to Sunday 5th April. Channel 5 will be the host television broadcaster.

A £500,000 ranking event, qualification for this 12-player tournament is exclusively through the one-year list - that’s cumulative prize money won from this season’s ranking events, starting with the Championship League last summer up to and including the recent World Open held in China.

What is the format, and how does the draw work?

In 2024, when the competition moved to Manchester, the field expanded from the top eight players on the seasonal list to the top 12, and the introduction of a second table in the arena for the opening two rounds.

The top four from the one-year list go straight through to the quarter-finals, whilst those seeded 5th to 12th play in the preliminary round (last 12) with the winners of those fixtures advancing to the last eight where they meet the top four.

The draw is fixed as per seeding positions from the one-year list, so for example, the number one and two seeds are in opposite halves of the draw.

All matches throughout the tournament are the best of 19 frames, played across two scheduled sessions.

Who has qualified and who is playing in the 2026 Tour Championship?

Neil Robertson, Zhao Xintong, Mark Selby and Shaun Murphy are the top four seeds for this year's edition and get a pass to the last eight.

Robertson and Murphy are former winners of this title. Reigning world champion Zhao is aiming to create history by winning all three Players Series events in the same season after back-to-back successes at the World Grand Prix and Players Championship.

Instead of the top 12 being invited to the event, it is actually the top 13 due to Ronnie O'Sullivan - who would have qualified as the number eight seed - electing not to enter it. This means that 13th-placed Mark Allen gets a reprieve and a spot in the draw.

The biggest story in terms of the qualification race was surprise World Open winner Un-Nooh, who came out of the blue and through the pack at the very last minute to book a spot for Manchester.

The Thai ace - who will be making his Tour Championship debut - rocketed up the one-year standings with the £175,000 top prize he won in Yushan after defeating O'Sullivan in the final with a scintillating performance that included a 147.

Un-Nooh's unexpected run dislodged Xiao Guodong out of the qualification places.

Reigning Tour Champion John Higgins gets a chance to defend the title as he is the 12th seed. Last year, the four-time world champion labelled his triumph as his ‘best ever win’.

Along with Un-Nooh, Scottish Open champion Chris Wakelin is the other player ready to make his debut in this event.

World number one Judd Trump - who is yet to reach the final of this event, and has lost his opening match in each of the last four times he has played in it - made the cut as the number five seed, although he will have to play in the preliminary round.

Mark Williams - winner of this crown two years ago, therefore defending £150,000 from his ranking total - is back, as too are Wu Yize and Barry Hawkins.

The biggest casualty not to have made this year’s qualification grade is world number two Kyren Wilson, who despite winning the lucrative Shanghai Masters and Masters invitationals, is currently 20th on the one-year list having not reached a ranking event semi-final this season.

Wilson will be hoping history repeats itself as in 2024 he failed to reach the Tour Championship but ended up claiming the sport’s blue riband prize, the World Snooker Championship, at the Crucible Theatre a few weeks later.

What is the prize money and how much does the winner get?

There is a total prize fund of half-a-million pounds at the 2026 Tour Championship, with £150,000 of that going to the eventual champion.

• Champion: £150,000
• Runner-up: £60,000
• Losing semi-finalists: £40,000 (each)
• Losing quarter-finalists: £30,000 (each)
• Losers in round one (Last 12): £20,000 (each)
• Highest break of the event: £10,000
• Total prize fund: £500,000

The Tour Championship is the final event before the 2026 World Snooker Championship (qualifying rounds April 6-15, main event at the Crucible April 18-May 4).

The only player in this year’s Tour Championship field that is ranked outside of the current world’s top 16 is Un-Nooh. If he were to win the title in Manchester, Un-Nooh would go into the elite bracket - dislodging Ding Junhui - and be a seed player for the Crucible, therefore avoiding the qualifying rounds.