Sign of the times as record-breaking number of Chinese players qualify for World Snooker Championship

Over a third of this year’s main draw field at the Crucible will be from the Far East - something that has never happened before.

A total of 11 Chinese cueists have qualified for the last 32 of snooker’s blue riband competition. This breaks the previous record of 10 set at last year’s event, which was won by Zhao Xintong, the first Asian winner of the Championship.

This year’s bumper crop of Crucible-bound players from China consists of five seeds and six qualifiers.

As the reigning champion, Zhao is the number one seed, and he was already guaranteed to be joined at snooker’s biggest party by compatriots Xiao Guodong, Wu Yize, Si Jiahui, and Ding Junhui who are also ranked inside the world’s top 16. Five Chinese seeds at a World Championship is also a new record.

The other six made it through the preliminary rounds which were recently staged at the English Institute of Sport elsewhere in Sheffield.

Zhou Yuelong, Pang Junxu, Lei Peifan, Zhang Anda, and Fan Zhengyi will all be returning to snooker’s grandest stage, while He Guoqiang will be making his first appearance there.

Last year’s benchmark of 10 represented a significant increase from the previous record of six.

A decade ago, there were three Chinese players at the Crucible for the 2016 World Snooker Championship. Ten years before that, no player from mainland China had ever played there before; Ding Junhui made his debut in 2007.

England will have the largest representation of players at this year’s Crucible with 13, although it could have been the other way around if China’s Jiang Jun (v Stan Moody) and Xu Si (v Gary Wilson) came out on the right side of deciding frame finishes in the final qualifying round.

Chinese snooker continues to become more prominent on pro tour

This new green baize record for China is the latest in a string of notable feats for the country on the World Snooker Tour in recent times.

At this season’s first Triple Crown event, the 2025 UK Championship, an unprecedented 12 Chinese players made it through to the last 32 at the Barbican Centre. This was up three from the previous yardstick.

For the start of the televised stages in York, China had just as many players in the draw as England did, although no Chinese cueist made it to the last four, and it was an all-English final between Judd Trump and Mark Selby.

Several Chinese records were made at the 2026 Masters in London. A record five players from the country featured in the draw, with Wu, Xiao and Zhao all making it through to the quarter-finals. Before then, only two players from mainland China had ever reached the last eight in Masters history, and never more than one in any year.

In recent years, we have seen several Chinese exponents win their maiden ranking event titles.

This decade, Zhao, Fan, Zhang, Xiao, Lei, and Wu have all secured their first professional trophies. Meanwhile, on the women’s tour, Bai Yulu is the reigning back-to-back world champion and current world number one.