European Poker Tour (EPT) 2026: Schedule, Winners, Buy-Ins & How to Qualify

Last Updated on September 12, 2026 by Bala Kumar

If WSOP is poker’s summer pilgrimage to Las Vegas, the European Poker Tour is what happens the rest of the year when the circuit packs up and heads across the Atlantic. Casino floors in Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Paris, and Prague turn into weeks-long festivals where a recreational player who satellited in for a few dollars can end up seated next to someone with a mid-six-figure career total. That mix,  glamour, accessibility, and genuinely massive prize pools,  is why the EPT has stayed the benchmark European live tour for over two decades.

This guide covers everything you need: the 2026 schedule, who’s already won this year, how the buy-in structure actually works, and the fastest ways to get into a Main Event without paying full price.

What Is the EPT?

The European Poker Tour launched in September 2004 with a single stop in Barcelona. PokerStars became its exclusive sponsor and owner in 2011, and the tour has been the operator’s flagship live festival ever since. Alongside the WSOP and the WPT, the EPT forms what’s often called poker’s “Triple Crown”,  the three tours every serious tournament player wants a title from.

What sets the EPT apart from a regular casino series is scale. A single EPT stop can run for two full weeks, packing in dozens of side events, high rollers, and mystery bounties around one headline Main Event that regularly draws well over a thousand entries. Add in luxury host cities and heavy PokerStars broadcast coverage, and you get a tour that functions as much as a poker vacation as a competition.

EPT 2026 Schedule: The Four Stops

This year’s EPT calendar ran across four festivals:

Paris, Monte Carlo, and Barcelona have already wrapped up. EPT Prague is the last stop of the year, running December 2–13 at the Hilton Prague, and it’ll close out the 2026 season the same way it has for years — as the tour’s traditional winter finale.

Who’s Won So Far in 2026

Three Main Events are already in the books, and each one told a very different story.

EPT Paris — Jorge Abreu (€1,148,600). The Portuguese pro entered the final day holding more than half the chips in play and simply never gave it back, closing out a 1,474-entry field for the biggest score of a 17-year online career. His final hand against German streamer Felix Schneiders — spiking an eight on the river to crack pocket queens — sealed a dominant wire-to-wire run. Schneiders, who started the final day as the short stack, still walked away with a career-best €717,350 for second.

EPT Monte Carlo — Roman Stoica (€825,000). The Russian pro from St. Petersburg had already made deep runs at EPT Malta and EPT Prague without closing one out. This time, starting the final table in the middle of the pack against overwhelming chip leader Bernhard Binder, Stoica clawed his way to the top and finished the job in just four hours. It’s Russia’s ninth EPT title overall.

EPT Barcelona — Manuel Ferrari (€1,002,488). Barcelona remains the tour’s biggest recurring draw, and 2026 didn’t disappoint — 1,823 entries made it the seventh-largest EPT Main Event in the tour’s 22-year history. Italian grinder Manuel Ferrari, who’d already picked up two PokerStars Open trophies earlier in the year, added his third piece of hardware in 14 months, defeating runner-up Lukas van Eeden after a three-way deal locked up most of the top money.

Between the three completed Main Events, EPT 2026 has already paid out close to €3 million to its champions alone, before counting the dozens of side events and high rollers that ran alongside each stop.

Understanding the EPT Main Event

Every EPT stop is built around one headline tournament — simply called the Main Event — usually carrying a €5,300 buy-in in No-Limit Hold’em. It’s a multi-day affair: a few starting flights that combine into a single field, several middle days of gradual elimination, and a nine- or eight-handed final table that’s broadcast live.

Main Event fields vary a lot by city. Barcelona is consistently the biggest, regularly topping 1,800-2,000 entries; Monte Carlo tends to run smaller and tougher, often sitting closer to 1,000; Paris and Prague fall somewhere in between. The venue matters less for prize pool size than you’d think — with rebuys and re-entries factored in, even the “smaller” stops routinely generate prize pools north of €5 million.

Buy-Ins: What It Actually Costs to Play

The €5,300 Main Event gets the spotlight, but the EPT schedule around it covers a huge range:

• Entry-level side events: a few hundred euros, often structured as freezeouts or turbo formats
• PokerStars Open events: run alongside every EPT stop, typically €1,000–€1,650, aimed at recreational players who want live tournament reps without the Main Event price tag
• The Main Event: €5,300, standard across most stops
• High Rollers: €10,300, drawing a tighter field of grinders and pros
• Super High Rollers: €25,000 to €100,000+, reserved for the tour’s highest-stakes crowd

If the direct buy-in feels out of reach, that’s exactly what the satellite system exists for — more on that below.

City Spotlight: Barcelona, Monte Carlo & Paris

EPT Barcelona is the tour’s flagship stop and has been since the very first EPT event in 2004. It draws the biggest fields on the calendar almost every year, helped by Casino Barcelona’s capacity and the city’s appeal as a destination in its own right. If you’re choosing one EPT stop to attend as a spectator or satellite in for, Barcelona is the one with the most atmosphere and the deepest amateur turnout.

EPT Monte Carlo trades volume for prestige. Sporting Monte-Carlo has hosted the tour for years, and the Monaco stop tends to attract a sharper, more professional-heavy field — smaller numbers, but a final table you’re more likely to recognize names from. It’s also historically been a stop where players chasing the “Triple Crown” (WSOP, WPT, and EPT titles) have tried to complete the set, as Bernhard Binder was doing in 2026 before Stoica denied him.

EPT Paris returned to Le Palais des Congrès as the season opener, and the 2026 edition drew a strong 1,474-entry field despite running in the traditionally quieter February–March window. Paris has increasingly become a launchpad stop for streamers and content creators building an audience around their runs, which was very much the story behind Felix Schneiders’ runner-up finish this year.

Notable EPT Champions

The all-time EPT champions list reads like a who’s-who of the game’s last two decades. Some of the more recognizable names include multiple-time winners who’ve used the tour as a proving ground before or alongside WSOP success — players like Adrián Mateos, who won an EPT Grand Final at just 20 years old after already claiming a WSOP Europe Main Event title as a teenager. The tour has also crowned its share of recreational breakthrough stories, players who satellited in for a fraction of the buy-in and walked away seven figures richer.

2026 has already added Jorge Abreu, Roman Stoica, and Manuel Ferrari to that list, with EPT Prague in December set to crown the year’s fourth and final Main Event champion.

How to Qualify Without Paying Full Price

You don’t need €5,300 sitting around to play an EPT Main Event. PokerStars runs an extensive online satellite system for every stop, and the operator actively aims to have at least a quarter of each Main Event field arrive through online qualifiers rather than direct buy-ins.

A few practical routes in:

• Direct satellites: single-table or multi-table qualifiers that award a Main Event package (buy-in plus, often, a travel and accommodation stipend)
• Power Path: a step-based satellite ladder that lets you start at a low buy-in and climb toward a full Main Event seat over several stages
• Sub-satellites: smaller qualifiers feeding into the bigger satellites, which is how players routinely turn a few dollars into a five-figure buy-in

If you’re newer to satellites, start with the lowest rung of Power Path rather than jumping straight into a direct single-table satellite — the ladder system is specifically designed to let you build up rather than risk your whole bankroll on one shot.

EPT vs. WSOP vs. WPT: How They Compare

The honest answer to “which one should I play” depends entirely on what you’re after. The WSOP Main Event carries the most historical prestige and the biggest single prize pool most years. The WPT runs the most events across the widest geographic footprint, so it’s often the easiest to fit around your own travel plans. The EPT sits in between — fewer stops than the WPT, but each one is a genuine multi-week festival with a level of production and atmosphere that’s hard to match outside Vegas.

What’s Next

With Barcelona wrapped up, all eyes turn to EPT Prague, running December 2–13, 2026 at the Hilton Prague. As the traditional season closer, expect a mix of players making one last push for Player of the Year points and recreational qualifiers looking to end the year with a career-best score. We’ll update this page once the Prague schedule and satellite paths go live.

FAQs

Bala Kumar

Founder of PokerClubGames.com and a Poker Researcher with 10+ years of experience in SEO, WordPress development, and gaming content strategy. Specializes in researching online poker sites, poker apps, tournaments, bonuses, and poker strategies. Experienced in poker platform reviews, affiliate marketing, and creating SEO-focused poker content for global audiences.

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