2026 WCOOP Full Schedule: 121 Events, Six Main Events, $6.5M+ Guaranteed

Last Updated on September 2, 2026 by Bala Kumar

The 2026 World Championship of Online Poker runs on PokerStars from September 6 to September 30. It is the 25th edition of the series, and it is the biggest one in years: 121 numbered events spanning 350 individual tournaments, roughly $40 million in total guarantees, and buy-ins that stretch from $5.50 all the way up to a $25,000 Super High Roller. Six Main Events land on September 27 and 28 with more than $6.5 million guaranteed between them. Every single tournament winner takes home a trophy, which means 350 players will finish the month calling themselves WCOOP champions.

Here is the full breakdown, what has actually changed this year, and where the value sits if you are not sitting on a five-figure bankroll.

Series tracker  [update this box weekly]

Status: Schedule confirmed. Series begins September 6.

•     Next milestone: Opening Sunday, September 6, alongside the Sunday Million 20th Anniversary final phase

•     Main Events: September 27 (NLHE) and September 28 (PLO)

•     Satellites: running now, from $0.55

What is WCOOP 2026 and when does it run?

WCOOP is PokerStars’ flagship online tournament festival, and it has been running since 2002. The concept has not changed much in a quarter of a century: for roughly a month, the site stacks its schedule with championship events across every poker variant it spreads, and the winners get a trophy rather than just a payout.

What has changed is the scale and the structure. The 2026 edition is built on a three-tier system, where most events run simultaneously at Low, Medium and High buy-ins. That is why the numbers look confusing at first glance: 121 events is the count of distinct tournaments on the schedule, while 350 is the number of actual tournaments once you multiply most of them across the three tiers.

Opening day doubles up. September 6 also hosts the final phase of the Sunday Million 20th Anniversary event, which carries a $5 million guarantee of its own, with daily Phase 1 heats running right up until then. If you have been sitting on a Phase 1 stack, that is where your month starts.

If you are mapping out the rest of your autumn as well, our full poker tournament calendar covers the live series running alongside WCOOP.

What are the six WCOOP Main Events?

The Main Events are split across two disciplines and two days. No-Limit Hold’em goes first on September 27, then Pot-Limit Omaha follows on September 28. Each runs at all three buy-in tiers, which is how you get six Main Events instead of the usual one or two.

Do the maths and the Hold’em side accounts for $5.75 million of the $6.5 million, with Omaha adding the remaining $750,000. That split tells you something useful about where the traffic goes, and it is worth remembering when you are deciding which tier to enter.

The $10,300 NLHE Championship is the one with the history attached. Previous winners of the big WCOOP Main Event include JC Tran, Yevgeniy Timoshenko and Fedor Holz, and Gilles Simon took the title in 2025. It is the closest thing online poker has to a Main Event bracelet.

Which events award World Championship titles?

Ten tournaments on the schedule carry official World Championship status. The two $10,300 Main Events account for two of them, and the other eight are spread across the month in different disciplines: 6-Max No-Limit Hold’em, HORSE, Razz, 2-7 Triple Draw, PLO8, Progressive Knockout, 8-Game, and a Women’s Championship.

Three worth putting in your calendar now:

•     $5,200 NLHE 6-Max Championship on September 6, right at the start of the series

•     $215 Women’s NLHE Championship on September 20, by far the most accessible championship title on the schedule

•     $2,100 8-Game Championship on September 24, for the mixed-game crowd

Most of the other championship events sit at $1,050 or above. If a world title is the goal rather than the money, the Women’s Championship at $215 is the cheapest route to one on the entire schedule.

Why should fields be bigger than last year?

This is the part most schedule roundups skip, and it matters more than any single guarantee number.

The 2026 WCOOP is the first one held since PokerStars launched its new network structure, with Betfair Poker UK migrating onto PokerStars software and sharing the same player pool as PokerStars dot-com. In practical terms, that means a larger combined pool feeding into the same tournaments.

Bigger pools cut both ways. Prize pools should comfortably clear their guarantees in the popular events, and fields will be softer at the low end because a migration brings in players who were not previously WCOOP regulars. But it also means deeper fields, longer runs to the money, and more variance in the events you actually plan your month around. Build your schedule expecting late nights rather than quick exits.

We will track actual turnout against the guarantees in the results section below as the series progresses, so you can see whether the bigger pool theory holds up in practice.

How do you qualify for WCOOP without a big bankroll?

This is where WCOOP genuinely earns its reputation, because the qualification structure is unusually deep.

Direct satellites start at $0.55. These run around the clock throughout the festival and feed into events at every tier. The realistic path for most players is a multi-step climb rather than one lucky spin, so budget for several attempts instead of treating one satellite as your shot.

WCOOP Spin & Go tournaments start at $0.75. These are the fast, lottery-style three-handed games with a randomised prize multiplier. Low expected value if you grind them, but they are the quickest way to turn pocket change into a Main Event seat.

The Lucky Dip promotion is handing out $500,000 in tournament tickets across the series, and a WCOOP edition of Power Path Express is distributing more than $175,000 in ticket bundles and Main Event entries. Both are free-entry or low-cost paths, so check the promotions tab before you spend anything.

Leaderboards add another $100,000 in cash prizes, split across the Low, Medium and High tiers plus an overall Player of the Series race. The tiered structure matters here: a low-stakes grinder is competing against other low-stakes grinders, not against the $25,000 crowd.

There is also the #WCOOPGames team format, where players enter an ambassador’s centroll for free and qualifying entrants play last-longer face-offs inside regular WCOOP tournaments. It costs nothing to enter, which makes it the definition of free equity.

Before you start firing satellites, work out what the series should actually cost you. Our free poker bankroll calculator will tell you how many bullets your roll can genuinely support across a month of daily events.

How does WCOOP compare to WSOP Online 2026?

Both series land in September, which forces a genuine choice for anyone with a limited bankroll.

The honest read: WSOP Online has the far larger headline number on a single tournament, while WCOOP has the deeper, broader schedule and the better structure for players who cannot fire a $5,000 buy-in. If you play anything other than Hold’em, WCOOP is not really a contest.

Full details on the rival series are in our WSOP Online Main Event guide, including the qualification routes and how the $25 million guarantee is structured.

Which WCOOP events are actually worth playing?

A few practical notes after looking at the full slate.

The $109 NLHE Main Event is the standout value. A $1.25 million guarantee at a two-figure buy-in is an unusual ratio, and it will draw a field full of satellite winners and recreational players.

Do not ignore the familiar weeklies. Thursday Thrill, Super Tuesday, Sunday Warm-Up, Sunday Kickoff, Saturday KO and Wednesday Surprise all return inside the WCOOP schedule, usually with inflated guarantees. If you already play these every week, you are getting championship-branded versions of your normal grind.

The mixed-game championships are the softest titles. With at least 18 variants on the schedule, including Badugi, Stud, NLO8 and both forms of 2-7 Lowball, the fields in the more obscure formats are a fraction of the Hold’em turnouts. If you have studied any of them, the title equity is far better than in NLHE.

Plan your bankroll for a month, not a night. Twenty-five days of daily events is how players end up firing far more than they intended. Decide your total series budget before September 6, not on September 20.

One more thing worth doing before the series starts: deep-run spots in these events are decided on the bubble and at the final table, where chip value stops matching cash value. If you have not worked through that maths recently, our ICM calculator is a quick way to sharpen up before you are staring at a $1.25 million prize pool with 15 big blinds.

2026 WCOOP results tracker

This section is updated as events complete. Check back through September for turnout figures, overlays and champions.

The series has not started yet. Results will appear here from September 6.

[Editor: from September 6, replace the line above with this table and add rows newest first.]

The bottom line

The 25th WCOOP is the most structured version of the series in years, and the tiered format means the $109 player and the $10,300 player are chasing the same trophy on the same day. That accessibility, rather than the $40 million headline, is the real story. If you have been waiting for a reason to play a championship-level online event, a $109 Main Event with a $1.25 million guarantee is about as good a reason as September will offer.

For a wider view of where the traffic and the value sit outside this series, see our comparison of the leading poker sites.

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Sources

•     PokerNews, PokerStars 2026 WCOOP schedule release, August 2026

•     Pokerfuse, 25th WCOOP schedule breakdown and network migration

•     Poker.org and F5 Poker, Main Event buy-in and guarantee confirmation

•     iGaming Future and SCCG, series totals and promotion details

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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