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The new snooker season is about to get underway
Sunday promises to be the hottest day of the year so far in the UK. Perfect weather, then, to spend long hours inside Leicester’s Mattioli Arena as the 2025/26 professional snooker season gets underway.
Leicester is not twinned with Wuhan but is hosting qualifying matches for the ranking event there in August. Some players are excused a trip to the Mattioli. Xiao Guodong (defending champion), Judd Trump (world no.1), Zhao Xintong (world champion), Ding Junhui (highest ranked Chinese player) and Ronnie O’Sullivan (promoter’s pick) have their matches held over to China.
Other leading names are lined up against World Snooker Tour newcomers in a series of David v Goliath contests.
Mark Williams, ranked no.3 in the world at the age of 50, faces new Thai professional Chatchapong Nasa. Shaun Murphy, who turned pro at 15, meets snooker’s youngest ever professional, Poland’s 14 year-old Michal Szubarczyk. Kyren Wilson is the opposition for Connor Benzey. Neil Robertson takes on Ireland’s Leone Crowley and Ali Carter is Florian Nuessle’s first opponent on tour.
So, there are some intriguing matches to look forward to, almost none of which will be remembered by the time the campaign ends with the crowning of the 2026 world champion next May 4th.
The tournaments may all look familiar, but this is a season of transition and change in which the future direction of the sport will become clearer.
It’s the last of the original ten-year contract for the Home Nations Series. We await news on whether this will be renewed in full, in part or at all.
ITV’s broadcast contract is up after the Champion of Champions and has not been renewed, although the tournaments they currently screen will continue on other broadcasters.
It is also the last season of the current broadcast deal with Eurosport/TNTSports, which has done so much to take snooker to new audiences.
And at some point by the end of 2025, we should know the fate of the Crucible in the ongoing soap opera that is the future of the World Championship.
On the table, much of the focus will be on Zhao after his World Championship success. Will he struggle to adapt to his new status, like Luca Brecel did, or thrive and flourish like Kyren Wilson?
The smart money is surely on the latter. Zhao seemed to take everything in his stride at the Crucible and has done so since, a period during which he has been much in demand for personal appearances in China.
It will be Zhao who is now centre stage at most events, although the balance of power may not have shifted entirely. It will be interesting to follow the table allocations out in China if Ding is still in the same tournament, or O’Sullivan.
O’Sullivan himself starts the season at no.5 in the rankings but when the points due to come off his tally on the two-year rolling system are deducted he is 17th in the race to the Crucible standings. There is much snooker to come before April, but he cannot afford another season like the one just gone, in which he failed to reach a final but mainly failed to play at all.
Mark Allen, officially 10th, is also outside the top 16 on this list at 18th due to points which will be removed in the coming months.
Trump has been so successful in the last decade that his achievements are now taken for granted. The assumption is that he will win multiple titles again, but this ignores how difficult this is.
Now that he is based in Dubai, Trump may be less inclined to fly back to the UK for every competition, but snooker is not tennis, players are not training their bodies to peak for certain events. He likes to keep sharp, so is still likely to enter most tournaments.
Williams and John Higgins, both back in the top four, can be forgiven for giving a few events a swerve if they feel like it. Both 50, neither has anything to do prove but they are somehow still proving it anyway.
Wilson is an interesting case. No longer world champion, his place in the pecking order has therefore slipped a little, meaning potentially less table time in front of the cameras where he proved last season he plays his best snooker. He clearly loved competing as world champion. Will it take some readjusting now he no longer is?
Robertson, Murphy and Mark Selby have been reliable and regular winners for the last two decades and seem likely to feature in the later stages of various events as the season unfolds, but which ones?
Murphy of course triumphed at the Masters last season, but Selby has not won one of the frontline tournaments since 2021 when he became world champion for a fourth time. His Crucible defeat to Ben Woollaston meant he had lost in the first round in Sheffield two years running for the first time in his career. When he goes to the Masters in January, he will be looking for his first semi-final appearance there in 12 years.
Snooker fans are always on the lookout for new winners, so who could they be? It’s hard not to favour the 28-strong Chinese contingent, boasting so much young talent.
Chief among them is surely Wu Yize, who starts the campaign 20th in the rankings. Wu was runner-up last season in the English and Scottish Opens so has already threatened to join the winners’ circle and he’s still only 21.
His compatriot Si Jiahui is another contender. Si joined the top 16 for the first time early last season but his results then dramatically tailed off before he reached the World Championship quarter-finals.
Young British hopes rest mainly with Jackson Page, the 23 year-old double maximum man, and Stan Moody, 18, who did very well to keep his tour card.
The top 32 boasts several players who are much improved in recent times, including Joe O’Connor, Elliot Slessor and Yuan Sijun, any of whom could potentially come through the pack and land a title.
The Wuhan Open qualifiers give way to those for the British Open, from which the top 16 are excluded, and then the Championship League at the same venue.
Then the first big test for the top players comes at the prestigious Shanghai Masters at the end of July, which is followed by the big money Saudi Arabia Masters in August.
Then we’re off and running, and before you know it the fixed points in the calendar come into view: the start of the Home Nations Series, the Champion of Champions, UK Championship and into the new year with the Masters. Before you know it we’ll be talking again about the Crucible Curse.
18 ranking events are currently scheduled. Some perspective: 20 years ago, there were six. 15 years ago, there were eight, supplemented by the new PTCs. 10 years ago, there were ten.
Professional snooker may not have grown fast enough for some, but it has grown. Last season, 23 players earned at least £200,000 in prize money, the total amount of which rose by £4m compared to 2023/24, due in large part to the new Saudi ranking event.
The top 16 earned more than half of this between them, hoovering up the big first prizes. But that’s sport. Rewards go to the winners. What all players now have is opportunities, hence the need for such an early start to the season.
Buckets and spades are being put away for now. It’s back to work.