New world record for century breaks set at the 2026 World Snooker Championship

Wu Yize’s effort of 140 in the 21st frame of his semi-final against Mark Allen at the Crucible on Saturday was the 251st century break of this year’s tournament when you include both the qualifying rounds and main draw stages.

This is an unprecedented amount of centuries registered in a top-flight snooker tournament. It broke the record that was set at last year’s World Championship of exactly 250.

A total of 144 players started out in the 2026 World Snooker Championship, although only 32 of these featured in the main draw at the Crucible in front of the television cameras.

The top 16 in the world rankings all went straight through to round one proper at the Crucible, but the remaining 128 contestants had to go to the qualifying gauntlet held at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield where there were four rounds and 16 golden tickets on offer.

A total of 177 tons were made at these preliminaries, smashing the previous benchmark of 143 - again, set at last year’s blue riband event.

One of these centuries at the qualifiers was a maximum 147 break from Chinese youngster Chang Bingyu which earned him a £157,000 bonus. He is also in line to pocket a further £15,000 jackpot for the tournament’s highest break prize which runs throughout both the qualifying and televised rounds.

At the time of writing (after the third session of both semi-finals) a total of 74 centuries have been compiled at the Crucible this year in main draw action, which is still some distance behind the record for the most ever made during the televised stages of 109 from 2022.

Over the past couple of weeks in Sheffield, a few different century accolades have been set: Ding Junhui made his 100 100th in World Championship competition - only the eighth player to achieve that feat - meanwhile current title holder Zhao Xintong scored the 2,500th Crucible century (in the professional event). In the quarter-finals, Allen struck his 700th century in professional play; the ninth cueist to join that exclusive list.

During his semi-final encounter with John Higgins, 2005 champion Shaun Murphy became the fifth person to have constructed 100 century breaks at the Crucible. Top of this list is Ronnie O’Sullivan with 219.

This new record for the most tons at a single professional event is another example of how strong the top tier player roster is these days. It has already been an unmatched season for maximum break making with 24 147s having been racked up on the World Snooker Tour - completely smashing the previous highest tally of 15 from last season.

To view the full draw, results, schedule, and other information from the 2026 World Snooker Championship, visit our tournament information centre here.

Many thanks to the amazing snooker results and stats website cuetracker.net for their information. Visit here for the list of the professional events that have yielded the most century breaks (please note, century breaks made in this year’s World Championship semi-finals won’t get added on to the site until the matches are finished and scores logged on to the system).