Upcoming Poker Tournament Schedule 2026: Major Live Events, WSOP, WPT & High Roller Guide

Last Updated on September 11, 2026 by Bala Kumar

If you tried to plan your poker travel around the old “May to July is everything” assumption, you’re already behind. That window is done, the 2026 WSOP wrapped its Main Event on August 5, EPT Paris and EPT Barcelona have both crowned champions, and Triton’s Montenegro stop is a wrap too. What’s actually left on the calendar for the rest of 2026 is a different, and in some ways more interesting, stretch: a dense run of WSOP Circuit stops across three continents, WPT’s fall festival swing through Asia and the US, and the two biggest closing events of the year, EPT Prague and WSOP Paradise,  both landing in December.

This guide sticks to what’s actually confirmed, with real dates pulled from tour operators as of September 2026, not projected guesses. If you’re building a fall or winter poker trip, or just tracking who’s winning what, here’s where the game is actually happening right now.

Where the 2026 Summer Series Left Off

Worth covering first, because it explains why the rest of this schedule looks the way it does. The 57th World Series of Poker ran from May 26 to July 15 at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas, with 100 in-person bracelet events plus 30 online bracelets. The Main Event itself didn’t finish until August 5 this year, WSOP shifted its ESPN broadcast window later in the summer, which is why the finale ran almost three weeks after the rest of the series closed.

The result was one for the record books in its own right: 22-year-old Lucas Jumalon, out of Spokane, Washington, took down a field of 9,208 entries and beat Finland’s Lauri Saaskilahti heads-up for the $10,000,000 top prize, becoming the second-youngest Main Event champion in history behind Joe Cada’s 2009 win. That’s the context for everything below, the flagship summer series is over, and the tours have already moved into their fall and winter programming.

WSOP Circuit: The Backbone of Fall Poker

If you want consistent, affordable live poker between now and the end of the year, the WSOP Circuit is doing most of the heavy lifting. 2026 was the first year WSOPC moved to a true calendar-year schedule instead of starting right after the summer series, and that shift shows in how packed the September-to-November stretch actually is.

A few things stand out here if you actually play these events instead of just reading about them. The Main Event buy-in across nearly every Circuit stop sits around $1,700 — cheap enough that you can build a whole fall travel calendar around three or four stops without needing a six-figure bankroll. And 2026 introduced real geographic firsts: Madrid’s Casino Gran Via is hosting its very first WSOP Circuit event, and Toledo, Ohio and Talking Stick in Arizona are both brand-new stops on the US side. If you’ve been Circuit-grinding the same five venues for years, this is the year the map actually expanded.

World Poker Tour: Fall Festivals Across Three Continents

WPT’s back half of 2026 is genuinely global. After Season 24’s early events,  including Giuseppe Iadisernia’s win at WPT Lucky Hearts in January and Xiaosheng Zheng’s title at WPT Cambodia in February, a the tour is running three festival stops across September and October, spanning Australia, the US, and Asia.

●       WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star — San Jose, California, at Bay 101 Casino, running October 16 through November 1. This is one of WPT’s longest-running and most tradition-heavy stops.

●       WPT Venetian Fall Championship — The Venetian Resort Las Vegas is hosting another Championship event this fall, following the $2 million guaranteed edition earlier in the year.

●       WPT Seoul — A historic debut for the tour. Running October 30 to November 9, 2026 at INSPIRE Entertainment Resort, this marks WPT’s first-ever event in South Korea, timed to coincide with the opening of a new entertainment space at the venue.

Practical note if you’re weighing WPT against WSOP Circuit for value: WPT’s flagship Main Events typically run $3,500–$10,000, noticeably higher than the Circuit’s $1,700 standard. If you’re newer to live tournaments, WPT Prime is the better entry point — buy-ins around $1,100 with side events often just a few hundred dollars, built specifically to bring in recreational fields without the sky-high variance of the Main Tour.

European Poker Tour: Two Stops Left, Both Worth Watching

EPT’s 2026 season already delivered a loaded first half — Jorge Abreu took the €5,300 Main Event in Paris back in February for over €1.1 million, and Manuel Ferrari won EPT Barcelona in August for €1,002,488 after a three-way deal, capping off a Main Event field of 2,045 entries. That Barcelona field, run August 16–29, was on the extreme end even by EPT standards.

The only stop left is the big one: EPT Prague, running December 2–13, 2026, at the Hilton Prague. It’s the traditional season closer, and last year’s edition pulled in more than 1,200 Main Event entries for a prize pool north of €5.9 million — expect similar or bigger numbers this time given how well Barcelona performed. There’s also a new PokerStars Open added to the European schedule in Aix-en-Provence, running November 2–8, for players who want a lower-buy-in stop before Prague.

One thing worth knowing if you’re chasing tour standings: PokerStars runs a season-long Live League leaderboard across three stakes tiers, and Prague is where that race gets decided. As of the Barcelona stop, Spain’s Juan Pardo led the High tier standings, with Austria’s Klemens Roiter close behind — so Prague isn’t just a Main Event, it’s a leaderboard decider too.

Triton Poker: Quiet for Now, But Watch December

Triton’s confirmed 2026 calendar so far has been lighter than usual — just two stops instead of the four or five the tour has run in past years. Triton ONE and the Super High Roller Series both took place in Jeju back in March, and the Montenegro stop ran May 13–28 at the Maestral Resort, where Adrian Mateos won the $200,000 Triton Invitational for a career-best $6.37 million.

Triton hasn’t announced anything for the back half of 2026 as of this writing, but the tour has historically closed its year with a stop tied to WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas — that happened in December 2025, and if the pattern holds, a similar announcement for December 2026 wouldn’t be a surprise. Worth checking back on if you play in the six-figure buy-in range; Triton doesn’t give much advance notice once it does confirm a date.

WSOP Paradise: The Year’s Real Finale

If EPT Prague is the European season closer, WSOP Paradise is the closer for the entire global calendar. Running December 1–18, 2026, at Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas, this is where the year’s $1 million WSOP Player of the Year race — which now spans WSOP Europe, WSOP Las Vegas, and Paradise as one unified season — gets settled.

Context on why this series matters more than its size on paper suggests: the 2025 edition’s Super Main Event carried a $25,000 buy-in and produced a $72,275,000 prize pool — the second-largest prize pool of any tournament outside the WSOP Main Event, ever. Austrian online qualifier Bernhard Binder won that one for $10,000,000, beating a mostly recreational-heavy final table that included a French businessman as runner-up. If the 2026 edition tracks anywhere close to that, it’ll be one of the single biggest tournaments of the year, full stop.

How the Major Tours Actually Compare Right Now

A quick, honest comparison if you’re deciding where to spend your fall poker budget:

Notice the gap in the middle of that table — there isn’t really a $2,000–$3,000 tier being served well by any single tour right now, which is exactly the space WPT Prime and EPT’s PokerStars Open side series are trying to fill. If you’re a mid-stakes grinder without a six-figure bankroll, those are the events actually worth prioritizing over the marquee Main Events.

Final Thoughts

The back half of 2026 doesn’t have the single mega-headline that the WSOP summer series does, but it’s arguably a richer stretch for players who actually want to compete rather than just watch. You’ve got affordable, frequent Circuit stops running almost weekly through November, WPT making its first-ever trip to South Korea, and two genuine season finales — EPT Prague and WSOP Paradise — both landing in December within days of each other. Whether you’re chasing a ring, a bracelet, or just want to sharpen your tournament instincts before jumping into one of these fields, there’s a realistic entry point somewhere on this list regardless of bankroll.

Before you buy in anywhere, it’s worth putting in the reps first. Sharpening your instincts in structured, low-pressure games — reading bet sizing, understanding ICM pressure near the bubble, getting comfortable with mystery bounty dynamics — pays off more at a Main Event final table than most people expect. That’s exactly the kind of practical, no-money-on-the-line reps that poker club games are built for, and it’s a smart stop before stepping into any of the series above.

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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