Some poker players chase one big score for a decade and never find it. Manuel Ferrari found his third one in fourteen months. The Italian grinder, who spends most of his career at the mid-stakes tables, just closed out the 2026 PokerStars EPT Barcelona Main Event, taking down a field of 1,823 entries to win €1,002,488 and the Golden Shard trophy, the biggest score of his life by a wide margin.
If you’ve never heard the name Manuel Ferrari before this week, you’re not alone. But after this run, that’s about to change fast.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
| Event | 2026 PokerStars EPT Barcelona Main Event |
| Buy-in | €5,300 |
| Total entries | 1,823 (7th-largest EPT Main Event in 22-year history) |
| Prize pool | €8,841,550 |
| Winner | Manuel Ferrari (Italy) |
| First prize | €1,002,488 |
| Runner-up | Lukas van Eeden — €927,420 |
| Third place | Jose Criado — €910,642 |
| Winning hand | A♦Q♥ |
| Venue | Casino Barcelona, Spain |
The Biggest Field Barcelona Has Seen in Years
Let’s start with the scale of this thing, because it matters. 1,823 entries made this the seventh-largest EPT Main Event in the tour’s 22-year history, a genuinely massive turnout for a €5,300 buy-in event. That size pushed the prize pool to €8,841,550, meaning the top 271 finishers all walked away with something to show for their trip to Barcelona.
For context, this wasn’t a soft, casual-heavy field either. Names like John Juanda (15th), Romain Lewis (22nd), Brock Wilson (41st), and Antoine Labat (48th) all made deep runs before bowing out, and reigning PokerStars Open Monte Carlo champion Joris Ruijs went out in 9th place for $147,262. This was a genuinely stacked field, and Ferrari cut through all of it.
Manuel Ferrari’s Unlikely Rise
Here’s what makes this win a genuinely great story rather than just another tournament recap: Ferrari isn’t a household name on the high-stakes circuit. He normally plays mid-stakes. His first-ever PokerStars trophy came in June 2025 at the PokerStars Open Malaga Main Event, worth just over €200,000. Half a year later, he added a second title at the PokerStars Open High Roller in Campione for roughly €87,000.
Then Barcelona happened, and everything changed. This win completes what’s being called his “PokerStars trifecta,” three titles across three different PokerStars-branded events in just fourteen months, capped off by a result that dwarfs the first two combined. When asked what’s next, Ferrari was refreshingly unhurried about it, saying he’d need about a month before even thinking about moving up in stakes.
How the Final Table Played Out
Ferrari arrived at the final table already holding the chip lead, a position he’d built and defended over the previous three days of play. The final table itself was genuinely international: Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, China, Ireland, and Lebanon were all represented among the six players who sat down for the last day, and every one of them was already guaranteed at least €278,950, a serious return on a €5,300 buy-in no matter how the rest of the day went.
Here’s how it thinned out from six to one:
6th place — Nicolas Chouity. Got his stack in with ace-ten suited against Jose Criado’s king-jack suited in an 18-big-blind pot. A king on the flop ended his run.
5th place — Michael Dwyer. Shoved ace-ten offsuit and ran into a dominating ace-queen offsuit from Xiaosheng Zheng, with 27.5 big blinds in the pot. No improvement, and Dwyer was out.
4th place — Xiaosheng Zheng. Shoved ace-seven suited and didn’t survive the confrontation, narrowing the table to the final three.
3rd place — Jose Criado. The Spaniard was chasing history, a win here would have made him only the second Spanish EPT Main Event champion ever and the first to do it on home soil in Barcelona. It wasn’t meant to be. He fell in third for €910,642 after a king-nine-ace flop set up a bad river card against him.
2nd place — Lukas van Eeden. The eventual runner-up made his stand on the final hand, open-shipping king-six on the button. Ferrari called with ace-queen, and the board improved him to two pair, sealing the title and crowning him the newest EPT champion.
The whole final table wrapped in a swift five hours, a fast, decisive finish for a tournament that had been building over an entire week.
The Deal That Locked In Life-Changing Money
Before that final hand played out, Ferrari, van Eeden, and Criado had already made a smart move: a three-way deal that locked in over €900,000 each, leaving just €100,000 of the total prize pool and the trophy itself up for grabs on the felt. It’s a standard move at this level of poker, but worth understanding if you’re newer to tournament poker: once three players are guaranteed seven figures collectively, there’s little reason to risk it all on variance when a deal can lock in near-equal outcomes and let the players compete purely for the trophy and bragging rights.
Why This Matters Beyond the Prize Money
A million-euro score on the biggest live poker stage in Europe is the kind of result that most professional players spend their entire careers chasing and never find. For Ferrari, doing it as a mid-stakes regular rather than an established high-stakes name makes the story land even better, it’s a genuine reminder that EPT Main Events remain one of the few spots in poker where a relative outsider can still climb to the very top of the game in a single week.
It’s also a strong showing for EPT Barcelona itself as a festival. Alongside Ferrari’s headline win, the series produced 13 total event winners, including Fabiano Kovalski, who became the only player to claim two titles at the series (the €3,250 EPT Mystery Bounty and the €10,300 EPT High Roller), and Tom Fuchs, who took home the single largest payout of the festival, €1,126,540, in the €100,000 EPT Super High Roller.
What’s Next for the EPT
With Barcelona wrapped, the European Poker Tour has one stop left on its 2026 calendar: EPT Prague, running December 2 to December 13 at Kings Casino. It’ll be the final chance of the year for players across Europe and beyond to add both a PokerStars Open and an EPT Main Event title to their résumé, and for Ferrari, it’s a natural next stage if he decides to test his game at a higher level sooner rather than later.
FAQs
Who won the 2026 EPT Barcelona Main Event?
Manuel Ferrari of Italy, who defeated a field of 1,823 entries to win €1,002,488 and the Golden Shard trophy.
How big was the prize pool?
€8,841,550, generated from 1,823 entries at a €5,300 buy-in, making it the seventh-largest EPT Main Event field in the tour’s 22-year history.
Who finished second and third?
Lukas van Eeden finished runner-up for €927,420, and Jose Criado placed third for €910,642, both locked in through a three-way deal with Ferrari before the final hand.
Is this Manuel Ferrari’s first major title?
It’s his biggest, but not his first. He’d previously won the PokerStars Open Malaga Main Event (June 2025) and the PokerStars Open High Roller in Campione (January 2026), completing what’s being called his “PokerStars trifecta.”
What was the winning hand?
Ferrari held ace-queen and improved to two pair against van Eeden’s king-six after the latter open-shoved on the final hand.
When and where is the next EPT stop?
EPT Prague, running December 2–13, 2026, at Kings Casino, the final EPT event of the 2026 season.
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