Riviera Poker Festival (November 2026): Schedule, Guarantees & Player Guide

Last Updated on October 7, 2026 by Bala Kumar

The Riviera Poker Festival is the kind of event that keeps French live poker healthy. It isn’t a €5,000 high roller or a televised final table. It’s a three-day weekend of affordable tournaments on the shore of Lac du Bourget, where club players, online qualifiers and a handful of travelling regulars mix at the same tables.

The November 2026 edition is listed for 6 to 8 November at Casino Grand Cercle in Aix-les-Bains, with registration closing on 27 October. Here’s what we know, what’s still to be confirmed, and how to plan your weekend.

Quick facts

Aix-les-Bains, not Aix-en-Provence

This trips up a lot of travelling players. Every published Riviera edition has been held at Casino Grand Cercle in Aix-les-Bains (Savoie, near Chambéry and Geneva). Aix-en-Provence, 300 km south, is home to the Pasino Grand Partouche, which hosted the WSOP Circuit in April 2026. Book your train to the right Aix.

Expected schedule

Fivebet hadn’t posted the November programme at the time of writing. Recent editions have followed a consistent template, so this is the format to expect. We’ll update this table as soon as the official schedule lands.

Times and buy-ins above are taken from the May 2025 and January 2026 programmes. Some editions have swapped the Super Riviera for a “Road to” qualifier event, such as the January 2026 Road to Swiss Poker Series with 40,000 starting chips.

Guarantees: what to realistically expect

No guarantee has been published yet. Rather than guess a headline number, it’s more useful to look at what regional events have actually drawn at this venue and nearby in 2026.

The Road to WPO is the closest match: same casino, same organiser, similar €250 price point. Its 121 entries put about €202 per entry into the prize pool. If the November Super Riviera attracts a similar field, expect a prize pool in the €20,000 to €30,000 range. That’s our estimate, not an official figure.

The WPO number shows the other side of the picture. When a big brand comes to town, this room can handle thousands of entries. The Riviera is a different product: smaller, cheaper and much softer.

Why the Riviera is worth the trip

•     Value structure. At €250 all-in, the €40 fee is 16%, which is steep in percentage terms. But the fields are full of club players and satellite winners, so the edge for a solid player is real.

•     Three flights. You can fire again if you bust Day 1A, or skip it and play the faster Saturday night flight.

•     A full weekend of poker. Cash games on Friday and a Sunday side event mean a Day 1 bust doesn’t end your trip.

•     The setting. The Grand Cercle is a listed 19th-century building on the edge of Lac du Bourget. November is quiet off-season, so hotels are cheaper than in summer.

Strategy tips for a regional festival field

After years of playing events at this level, the same patterns show up every time.

1.     Play the early flight if you’re patient, the late flight if you’re short on time. Saturday evening flights tend to draw players who want to bag quickly, which means more loose all-ins and fewer careful 3-bet pots.

2.     Value bet relentlessly. Regional fields call too much and bluff too little. Thin river value bets earn far more than fancy bluffs.

3.     Respect raises on the turn and river. In these fields, big late-street aggression is usually a strong hand. Fold more than a solver would.

4.     Budget for one re-entry, not three. Decide your total buy-in limit before Friday, so the third flight doesn’t become a tilt decision.

5.     Use the Highlander as your safety net. If you bust the main event, the €150 Sunday event is often the softest tournament of the weekend.

Getting there and practical tips

•     Location: Aix-les-Bains sits about 15 minutes north of Chambéry and roughly an hour by road from Geneva airport.

•     ID: French casinos check ID at the door. Bring a passport or national ID card and be 18 or over.

•     Booking: Fivebet takes festival reservations online by bank card or Bitcoin. It also runs online qualifiers if you’d rather win your seat.

•     Same-weekend clash: Fivebet also lists a Toulouse Poker Festival on 5–8 November 2026. If you follow the Fivebet circuit, choose your stop early.

The bottom line

The November Riviera Poker Festival looks set to be a classic low-cost regional weekend: a multi-flight €250 main event, cash games and a Sunday side event at a historic lakeside casino. The schedule and guarantees are still to come, so bookmark this page. We’ll update it the moment Fivebet publishes the programme.

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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