Who are the qualifiers for the 2025 UK Championship and claimed a ticket to York?

These players have made it through to the main venue, televised stages of the £1.2 million Triple Crown event which take place at the Barbican Centre in York between November 29 to December 7.

The main draw - where the qualifiers were randomly pitched against the world’s top 16 in round one proper - can be viewed here.

From this year's qualifiers, no one is more experienced than former world number two Stephen Maguire who won this UK title in 2004.

Currently the world number 25, Maguire survived a deciding frame finish in the penultimate qualifying round before a 6-1 win over Ian Burns at the final hurdle.

It has been a revitalising 2025 for the Scotsman who won his first ranking title in five years during the summer at the Championship League. His reward for making it through is a blockbuster showdown with current UK Champion Judd Trump in the opening session on Saturday afternoon.

Several other seasoned ranking event winners navigated the preliminaries gauntlet - Ryan Day, David Gilbert, and Michael Holt; like Maguire, all of them had to survive a final frame climax at some point in their journey.

The oldest qualifier is 50-year-old David Lilley who ousted Latvian teenager Artemijs Zizins, 6-5, to advance. Booking a berth for the Barbican will be particularly sweet for the former world seniors champion who lost in the final qualifying round in each of the last two years.

Another player who got the verdict from an eleventh frame was Ben Woollaston; the world number 37 dislodged Joe O'Connor 6-5 in a final round Leicester derby.

Five of the six highest ranked players who featured in Wigan - Chris Wakelin (world number 17), Jak Jones (18), Ali Carter (19), Stuart Bingham (20), Jack Lisowski (22) - all exited the competition - although world number 21 Elliot Slessor got the job done.

A semi-finalist at the Saudi Arabia Masters earlier this term, Slessor was made to work very hard but exhibited the battling matchplay qualities which have moulded him into one of the most improved exponents on the World Snooker Tour in recent times. He pipped Hungarian teenager Bulcsu Revesz 6-5 on the final black before coming back from 3-1 down to deny Zak Surety, 6-2.

Slessor will share the baize with world number two Kyren Wilson in one of the picks of the last 32.

The story of the final qualifying round was undoubtedly Scott Donaldson's mammoth comeback victory against former World and Masters Champion Stuart Bingham.

Aiming to tick off the UK Championship title and complete a 'Career Triple Crown', Bingham was in total control at 5-0 up. But with the combination of Bingham's game faltering and his opponent scoring well, world number 52 Donaldson strung together six consecutive frames to turn the tables and record an extraordinary 6-5 recovery victory.

After the match in an interview, an emotional Donaldson paid tribute to his father who passed away just a few weeks before.

The world number 81 coming into this tournament, 22-year-old Belgian Julien Leclercq is the lowest ranked player in this year’s UK Championship main draw.

The former Shoot Out runner-up who is nicknamed ‘The Beast’ shaded Haris Tahir 6-5, dismissed former World Championship finalist Jak Jones 6-2, and then got the better of He Guoqiang 6-4 in the final round - having kept his composure after his opponent levelled up from 4-0 down.

A quiet season up until now, Leclercq lost on Judgement Day last year. He can now prepare for a showdown with world number three Neil Robertson.

A big talking point at the 49th edition of the snooker's second-most prestigious ranking event will be the large number of Chinese competitors in front of the TV cameras - 12 to be exact, the same amount as English players.

Seven of these stars from the Far East are qualifiers: Lyu Haotian, Zhou Yuelong, Pang Junxu, Long Zehuang, Zhang Anda, Xu Si, and Lei Peifan - six of those are aged 28 or under.

Lei is the reigning Scottish Open champion who also inflicted the 'Crucible Curse' by shocking then title holder Kyren Wilson on the opening televised day of last season's World Championship.

Zhang Anda is a former International Championship winner who crafted a maximum 147 break at the Barbican last year. Having just dropped out of the world's elite top 16 bracket, 33-year-old Zhang has responded well in Wigan this week.

Zhou, Lyu, and Pang have all reached ranking event finals in the past, Long and Xu have been ranking semi-finalists.

World number 29 Zhou continues his fine form this season; in September he was one frame away from his maiden ranking title at the English Open when he lost 9-8 to Mark Allen, and last month he made the last four of the Northern Ireland Open.

A UK semi-finalist in 2020 when it was held behind-closed-doors in Milton Keynes because of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Zhou lost 6-5 to eventual champion Ronnie O'Sullivan in the quarter-final two years ago. The 27-year-old has a chance for green baize revenge at the Barbican having been drawn against the record eight-time champion in the opening round there.

Lyu emerged from back-to-back deciders at Robin Park. A Xi'an Grand Prix quarter-finalist last month, Lyu came back from 5-1 down to deny 2003 UK Champion Matthew Stevens 6-5, before registering the same result versus Mitchell Mann.

Seven of the 16 final qualifying round contests went all the way, including Long's victory over Louis Heathcote. From 5-3 behind, Long took it to a final frame where he cleared from yellow to pink to claim a main draw ticket.