Last Updated on July 9, 2026 by Bala Kumar
The European Poker Tour (EPT) is the richest and most prestigious poker tour in Europe, and heading into its 21st season, it remains one of the most-watched circuits in the game. Created by John Duthie, winner of the inaugural Poker Million, and launched by PokerStars in 2004, the EPT has built its reputation on spectacular destinations, massive prize pools, and an alumni list that reads like a who’s-who of modern poker. This guide covers everything you need to know: the full 2026 season so far, historic results, all-time money leaders, and how the tour has evolved since its first stop in Barcelona more than two decades ago.
The 2026 EPT Season So Far
The 2026 season has already delivered two completed festivals, with two more on the way.
| Event | Dates | Venue | Entries | Winner | Prize |
| EPT Paris | Feb 18 – Mar 1, 2026 | Le Palais des Congrès | 1,474 | Jorge Abreu (Portugal) | €1,148,600 |
| EPT Monte-Carlo | Apr 30 – May 10, 2026 | Sporting Monte-Carlo | 1,011 | Roman Stoica (Russia) | €825,000 |
| EPT Barcelona | Aug 16–29, 2026 | Casino Barcelona | Upcoming | — | — |
| EPT Prague | Dec 2–13, 2026 | King’s Casino | Upcoming | — | — |
EPT Paris 2026: Jorge Abreu’s Breakthrough Win
EPT Paris marked the tour’s return to the French capital after the 2025 edition was cancelled due to regulatory challenges around gambling law in Paris. The €5,300 Main Event drew 1,474 entries, generating a €7,075,200 prize pool over a 12-day festival at Le Palais des Congrès.
Portugal’s Jorge Abreu, a 35-year-old online grinder known as “Jorginho88” who had been a professional since age 18, dominated the tournament from Day 3 onward, entering the final table with more than half of the chips in play. He became the fourth Portuguese player to win an EPT Main Event, joining João Barbosa (Warsaw 2008), António Matias (Vilamoura 2009), and Pedro Marques (Prague 2025).
EPT Paris 2026 Main Event final table:
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
| 1st | Jorge Abreu | Portugal | €1,148,600 |
| 2nd | Felix Schneiders | Germany | €717,350 |
| 3rd | Enrico Coppola | Italy | €512,400 |
| 4th | Casimir Seire | Finland | €394,150 |
| 5th | Nazar Buhaiov | Ukraine | €303,150 |
| 6th | Tomas Jozonis | Lithuania | €233,200 |
| 7th | Thierry Gogniat | France | €179,350 |
| 8th | Sami Bechahed | France | €137,950 |
In the decisive heads-up hand, Abreu held J♠8♣ on a board of J♣6♣3♠7♠, and Schneiders’ river shove with Q♦Q♣ came up short after Abreu’s runner-runner two pair held. Abreu entered heads-up play with roughly a 10:1 chip lead and closed it out quickly.
EPT Monte-Carlo 2026: Roman Stoica’s First Major Title
EPT Monte-Carlo ran April 30–May 10 at the Sporting Monte-Carlo, and the €5,300 Main Event drew 1,011 entries, the sixth-largest field in the tournament’s history, from players representing 69 countries, producing a €4,903,350 prize pool.
Russia’s Roman Stoica, a 31-year-old from St. Petersburg, entered the final day in the middle of the pack before climbing through a series of key all-ins to take the chip lead and eventually dispatch Austria’s Bernhard Binder heads-up in just four hands. It was Stoica’s first major title and by far the biggest cash of his career, eclipsing the roughly $431,000 he won in a mystery bounty event at EPT Barcelona 2025. Stoica became Russia’s ninth EPT Main Event winner.
EPT Monte-Carlo 2026 Main Event final table:
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
| 1st | Roman Stoica | Russia | €825,000 |
| 2nd | Bernhard Binder | Austria | €515,000 |
| 3rd | David Djian | France | €368,750 |
| 4th | Samuel Ju | Germany | €283,550 |
| 5th | Jose Malpelli | France | €218,300 |
| 6th | Longmao Fan | China | €167,850 |
| 7th | Raul Mestre | Spain | €129,050 |
| 8th | Oshri Lahmani | Israel | €99,450 |
In the final hand, Stoica revealed trip sevens (7♥5♥) against Binder’s rivered two pair (K♦Q♦) to seal the title. Binder, the 2025 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event champion, had entered the final day as the dominant chip leader but was chasing the second leg of poker’s Triple Crown when he fell just short.
Beyond the Main Event, EPT Monte-Carlo 2026 set records of its own: the festival’s 46 completed events drew 9,182 total entries from 1,839 unique players, producing a series-record €46,645,848 in combined prize money, surpassing the entire 2025 series total despite a 21% smaller field. The new €250,000 Super High Roller, the largest buy-in ever offered at a PokerStars-branded event, drew 38 entries for a €9,310,000 prize pool and was won by Bulgaria’s Alex Kulev for €2,786,332, the largest single cash on PokerStars Live all year. Lebanon’s Albert Daher won the €100,000 High Roller for One Drop for €2,055,000, with 3% of every buy-in donated to the One Drop Foundation.
2026 EPT Schedule at a Glance
| Event | Dates |
| EPT Paris | February 18 – March 1, 2026 (completed) |
| EPT Monte-Carlo | April 30 – May 10, 2026 (completed) |
| EPT Barcelona | August 16–29, 2026 (upcoming) |
| EPT Prague | December 2–13, 2026 (upcoming) |
Barcelona and Prague remain the tour’s two most consistent anchor stops — both have hosted more EPT festivals than any city besides Monte Carlo, which held the EPT Grand Final every year from 2004 to 2016 (with the exception of 2011, when it moved to Madrid).
How the EPT Started: A Brief History
The EPT emerged directly from the early-2000s poker boom, riding the same wave of televised interest that produced Late Night Poker and the World Poker Tour. Its first season (2004–05) featured seven events and was won overall by the Netherlands’ Rob Hollink, who took the Grand Final in Monte Carlo for €635,000. The very first EPT stop, held in Barcelona in September 2004, was won by Sweden’s Alexander Stevic for €80,000 — a modest sum by today’s standards, but the seed of what would become Europe’s premier tour.
By Season 4 (2007–08), most EPT buy-ins rose to €8,000 — roughly equivalent to the WSOP’s $10,000 Main Event buy-in at the time — a move that made the EPT the largest poker tour in the world by total prize money, since the WSOP, while larger overall, was confined to a single Las Vegas location. That same season, the tour added the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) in the Bahamas, and first-place prizes started regularly crossing the seven-figure mark — Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier won $2,000,000 at the inaugural PCA in January 2008, and Glen Chorny closed the season with a €2,020,000 win at the Grand Final in Monte Carlo. Since 2011, the tour has been wholly owned and operated by PokerStars.
Record-Breaking Growth: The Barcelona Story
The EPT’s Barcelona stop has become the tour’s flagship event by field size. Its growth trajectory tells the story of the tour’s rising popularity over two decades:
| Year | EPT Barcelona Entrants | Winner | Prize |
| 2004 | 229 | Alexander Stevic | €80,000 |
| 2015 | 1,694 | John Juanda | €1,022,593 |
| 2019 | 1,988 | Simon Brandstrom | €1,290,166 |
| 2022 | 2,294 | Giuliano Bendinelli | €1,491,133 |
| 2023 | 2,120 | Simon Wiciak | €1,134,375 |
| 2025 | 2,045 | Thomas Eychenne | €1,217,175 |
The 2022 EPT Barcelona Main Event remains the largest EPT Main Event ever held, with 2,294 entries, nearly ten times the size of the tour’s first-ever event less than two decades earlier.
Top 10 Largest EPT Main Events of All Time
| Rank | Event | Entrants | Winner |
| 1 | EPT Barcelona 2022 | 2,294 | Giuliano Bendinelli |
| 2 | EPT Barcelona 2023 | 2,120 | Simon Wiciak |
| 3 | EPT Barcelona 2025 | 2,045 | Thomas Eychenne |
| 4 | EPT Barcelona 2019 | 1,988 | Simon Brandstrom |
| 5 | EPT Barcelona 2024 | 1,975 | Stephen Song |
| 6 | EPT Barcelona 2018 | 1,931 | Piotr Nurzynski |
| 7 | EPT Barcelona 2016 | 1,785 | Sebastian Malec |
| 8 | EPT Paris 2024 | 1,747 | Barny Boatman |
| 9 | EPT Barcelona 2015 | 1,694 | John Juanda |
| 10 | EPT Paris 2023 | 1,606 | Razvan Belea |
Nine of the ten largest fields in EPT history are Barcelona Main Events, a testament to why the city has become the tour’s undisputed marquee stop. Notably, EPT Paris 2026’s 1,474 entries would have ranked inside this all-time top 10 in most prior seasons, and EPT Paris 2024 also produced the tour’s oldest-ever Main Event champion in Barny Boatman.
Top 10 EPT First-Place Payouts
| Event | Winner | Prize |
| PCA 2009 | Poorya Nazari | $3,000,000 |
| PCA 2011 | Galen Hall | $2,300,000 |
| EPT Grand Final, Monte Carlo 2009 | Pieter de Korver | €2,300,000 |
| PCA 2010 | Harrison Gimbel | $2,200,000 |
| EPT Grand Final, Monte Carlo 2008 | Glen Chorny | €2,020,000 |
| PCA 2008 | Bertrand Grospellier | $2,000,000 |
| PCA 2013 | Dimitar Danchev | $1,859,000 |
| EPT Grand Final, Monte Carlo 2007 | Gavin Griffin | €1,825,010 |
| PCA 2012 | John Dibella | ~$1,775,000 |
| EPT Grand Final, Monte Carlo 2010 | Nicolas Chouity | €1,700,000 |
The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure produced four of the tour’s ten biggest paydays despite running for just over a decade before being folded back into the mainline schedule.
EPT All-Time Money List (Through January 2026)
| Rank | Player | Country | Cashes |
| 1 | Steve O’Dwyer | United States | $16,707,099 |
| 2 | Mikita Badziakouski | Belarus | $9,733,169 |
| 3 | Ole Schemion | Germany | $9,711,687 |
| 4 | Adrian Mateos | Spain | $9,488,337 |
| 5 | Sam Greenwood | Canada | $8,800,095 |
| 6 | Mike Watson | Canada | $8,506,052 |
| 7 | Daniel Dvoress | Canada | $7,267,955 |
| 8 | Stephen Chidwick | United Kingdom | $7,069,801 |
| 9 | Jean-Noel Thorel | France | $6,863,027 |
| 10 | Juan Pardo | Spain | $6,848,430 |
Steve O’Dwyer’s lead atop the all-time list is substantial, nearly $7 million ahead of second-place Mikita Badziakouski, built on a combination of consistent deep runs and an EPT Grand Final title in 2013. Bernhard Binder’s runner-up finish at EPT Monte-Carlo 2026 alone pushed his career earnings toward the $13.9 million mark, showing how quickly the current generation of high-volume grinders is climbing toward this list.
Notable EPT Milestones
- First two-time EPT champion: Victoria Coren-Mitchell, who won EPT London in Season 3 and EPT Sanremo in Season 10, a nine-year gap between titles.
- Only Triple Crown winner via EPT: Davidi Kitai became the fifth player ever to complete poker’s Triple Crown (EPT, WPT, and WSOP titles) with his EPT Berlin win in Season 8, and remains the only player to have completed the feat specifically through an EPT title.
- Youngest Spanish champion: Adrian Mateos won the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo in Season 11 at just 21, becoming the first Spanish player to win an EPT Main Event, two years after winning the WSOP Europe Main Event at 19.
- Oldest champion: Barny Boatman became the oldest EPT Main Event winner in tour history when he won EPT Paris in 2024.
- The Berlin robbery: EPT Berlin in Season 6 (2010) was suspended for several hours after armed men robbed the tournament venue mid-event; a suspect surrendered to German authorities two weeks later.
- Pandemic disruption: Only one live EPT festival was held in both 2020 and 2021, each in Sochi, Russia, as the tour scaled back operations during COVID-19; three 2020 stops (Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Prague) were cancelled outright. The 2020 season also introduced EPT Online, with 20 tournaments culminating in a $5,200 buy-in Online Main Event that drew 1,304 entries and was won by Sweden’s “WhatIfGod” for $1,019,082.
- Biggest buy-in event in EPT history: The new €250,000 Super High Roller debuted at EPT Monte-Carlo 2026, won by Bulgaria’s Alex Kulev for €2,786,332.
Where Has the EPT Been Held?
The tour has visited 23 destinations across 18 countries since 2004, not counting the Bahamas-based PCA. Barcelona leads all cities with 19 EPT festivals, followed closely by Monte Carlo and Prague with 18 each. London and the Bahamas have each hosted 12 events. Four cities have hosted only a single EPT festival in the tour’s history: Budapest (2008), Kiev (2009), Loutraki (2011), and Campione (2012).
Why the EPT Still Matters in 2026
More than two decades after its first event in Barcelona, the EPT remains one of the clearest windows into how live poker has scaled since the boom years of the mid-2000s. Field sizes have grown roughly tenfold, first-place prizes now regularly exceed €1 million, and 2026 alone has already produced a series-record prize pool at Monte-Carlo and a milestone comeback for the long-cancelled Paris stop. With Barcelona and Prague both still to come in the back half of the year, the European Poker Tour shows no signs of slowing down as it heads into its next chapter.
FAQs
FAQ 1: What is the European Poker Tour (EPT)?
The European Poker Tour is Europe’s leading live poker tournament series, launched in 2004 by PokerStars.
FAQ 2: Who won the EPT events in 2026?
Jorge Abreu won EPT Paris, and Roman Stoica won EPT Monte-Carlo.
FAQ 3: Which is the biggest EPT event?
EPT Barcelona is the largest and most popular stop on the tour.
FAQ 4: How can I qualify for an EPT event?
Players can qualify through online satellites, live satellites, or direct buy-ins.
FAQ 5: Why is the EPT important?
The EPT features prestigious titles, large prize pools, and some of the world’s best poker players.
