Judd Trump guaranteed to finish snooker season as world number one regardless of Crucible outcome

Following the recent 2025 Tour Championship that was won by John Higgins at the Manchester Central, the world rankings have been updated, and so have the provisional end-of-season projections for after the 2025 World Championship.

On those end-of-season provisional rankings, world number one Trump has £1,884,200 on his cumulative total, while World Champion and world number two Kyren Wilson has £1,304,300 - a difference of £579,900.

As the top prize at this year’s World Championship is £500,000, it means that even if Trump lost in the opening round and Wilson defied the Crucible Curse by successfully defending the world title, Trump can not be passed.

The 35-year-old has had another glittering season, winning this season’s two most lucrative competitions, so far - the inaugural Saudi Arabia Masters, and the UK Championship.

It will be the third time in Trump’s career that he will finish the season as the world number one.

However, should Wilson have a deep run in Sheffield again and Trump goes out early, there could be a fascinating race between them to be at the top of the global standings throughout next season.

Trump won five ranking titles during the 2023/24 campaign, and because of the two-year rolling ranking system the World Snooker Tour uses, he will be defending huge chunks of prize money ranking points throughout the 2025/26 term.

In comparison, Wilson had a poor - by his standards - 2023/24 season before hitting the ultimate snooker jackpot at the 2024 World Championship.

But the world rankings can change so dramatically these days, meaning ‘just’ a couple of tournament wins could get a player to world number one without having done much else during the previous 18 months or so.

The top prize at both the World Championship and the new Saudi Arabia Masters events are £500,000. These events - assuming the Riyadh-based tournament continues to be played at the start of autumn - are played just a few months apart. If one player was to win both, that’s £1million to their total, opening up a huge range of permutations on who could be top.

How long and how many times has Judd Trump been snooker’s world number one?

Judd Trump has been professional snooker’s world number one since the end of August 2024, following a rankings revision after the 2024 Xi’an Grand Prix in China.

Trump was assured of returning to the top spot after winning his semi-final, despite subsequently losing to Kyren Wilson in the final.

‘The Ace in the Pack’ replaced Mark Allen in first, after the Northern Irishman held the spot for 16 weeks.

At the 2024 World Snooker Championship, several players were in contention of finishing the competition as the world number one.

Despite bowing out in the last 16 having been ousted 13-12 because of an incredible counter clearance under pressure from John Higgins, other results went Allen’s way, and he became Northern Ireland’s first world number one in the sport.

Allen had that honour until Trump usurped him in Xi’an.

Trump is currently enjoying his fifth spell as the world number one. He first climbed to the top near the end of 2012, before another short spell there in early 2013.

It took over six years, though, for the Englishman to scale the heights again - in August 2019, as Trump added world number one status to the world championship crown he won for the first time a few months earlier.

For over two years Trump was at the top of the ladder. He then briefly regained it for three weeks in late 2021.

Who has been snooker’s world number one for the longest?

In total throughout his career, Trump (at the time of writing) has enjoyed 152 weeks as the world number one.

That’s seriously impressive, but a long way behind Stephen Hendry on the all-time list in first who spent 471 weeks as numero uno.

The king of the 1990s, Hendry also has the longest unbroken single spell as the world number one. The great Scot hogged the position from April 1990 to May 1998 - an incredible sequence of 418 consecutive weeks.

Hendry had taken over top spot from 1980s supremo Steve Davis who held the position for 365 successive weeks, which was the previous record for a single stint.

For the duration of the 2006/07 season, Hendry returned as world number one; back then, the rankings were only updated each season, not like now with the rankings being dynamic and being updated after every ranked tournament.

In terms of the most number of total weeks spent as world number one, Hendry is top with 471, Ronnie O’Sullivan is second with 389, and Davis third with 365.

How many players have been the world number one snooker player and who are they?

In professional snooker history, only 12 different players have been the world number one.

The rankings system was not introduced to the sport until the 1970s. Six-time World Champion Ray Reardon was snooker’s first world number one, holding the accolade for 312 consecutive weeks between May 1975 to April 1981.

Since then, Cliff Thorburn, Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, John Higgins, Mark Williams, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Neil Robertson, Mark Selby, Judd Trump, Ding Junhui and Mark Allen have also joined the exclusive club.

Allen was the first first-time world number one in over nine years since Ding Junhui became the first Asian cueist to reach the peak of the rankings mountain in 2014.