# World Snooker Tour

The World Snooker Tour (WST) is the main professional snooker tour, consisting of about 128 players competing on a circuit of up to 28 tournaments each season. It is administered by World Snooker Ltd, the commercial arm of professional snooker, with the current name, logo, and revised website introduced as part of the 2020 rebranding, previously titled as "World Snooker" tournaments organised under the World Snooker Association (WSA) banner. Since 2010, the principal stakeholder in World Snooker Ltd is Matchroom Sport, which owns 51 percent of the company; the sport's governing body, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), owns 26 percent. To compete on the World Snooker Tour, players must be WPBSA members.

## Background

The current incarnation of the World Snooker Tour was created in the early 1970s when the WPBSA took over the running of the professional game. At the time of the takeover, in 1971, there were only a handful of professional events to play in, but further events were gradually added throughout the 1970s, and by the end of the decade there were over twenty events on the calendar and snooker was a regular televised fixture. This period in the professional game has come to be known as the "modern era"; it is generally accepted to date from 1969 (when the BBC commissioned Pot Black and the knock-out format that is used by the modern-day World Snooker Championship was introduced) to the present day.
Historically a player just needed to become a professional member of the governing body to participate in events, which was attained by formal invitation by an existing current member, and this system was eventually replaced by the Pro-Ticket series. The game went open for the 1991–92 season, whereby anyone could apply for professional membership and enter the tournaments. Due to over-subscription, a two-tiered tour structure was adopted for the 1997–98 season: the primary tour—officially now known as the World Snooker Tour but previously known (and still commonly referred to) as the Main Tour—with a limited membership, and a secondary tour was established for the rest of the professional membership.

## Tournaments and structure

The World Snooker Tour consists of ranking tournaments that contribute to a player's ranking, and invitational events that do not. All players on the tour can enter a ranking event, whereas the entry criteria for an invitational event is often set by the sponsor or broadcaster, and usually excludes many players on the tour. The list of ranking tournaments have expanded throughout the years; there are now around 20 ranking tournaments regularly showing up on the yearly snooker calendar.
Ranking tournaments are often played in two stages—a qualification stage and the main draw, usually at different locations. The main draw is most likely to be held at a prestigious venue where audiences can purchase a ticket and watch the players compete. Typically only the main draw is televised, and therefore often carries considerably higher prize money than the qualifiers.
The current three of the most long-standing and prestigious events are collectively known as the Triple Crown, which have defined the careers of many professional snooker players. Most tournaments are mainly being held in the home nations, whereas tournaments in mainland Europe, China and the Middle East has also gained traction in the past decade. Notable events include:

### The Triple Crown

* World Snooker Championship, first held in 1927
* Masters, first held in 1975
* UK Championship, first held in 1977

#### The Home Nations Series

* English Open
* Welsh Open, first held in 1980 as the Classic
* Scottish Open, first held in 1981 as the International Open
* Northern Ireland Open
The European Series
* German Masters, first held in 1995
* Irish Masters, first held in 1975, last held in 2007
* European Masters, last held in 2023, with former editions played in Malta, Austria, Belgium, Romania and the Netherlands among other countries
* Gibraltar Open, last held in 2022
* Riga Masters, last held in 2019

### Outside Europe

* World Open, first held in 1982
* Australian Goldfields Open, first held in 1979, last held in 2015
* Dubai Classic, first held in 1988, and the subsequent Bahrain Championship and Saudi Arabia Masters
* China Open, first held in 1997, replaced by Xi'an Grand Prix and Wuhan Open
Other countries that have organised world snooker tournaments include Monaco, Canada, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Africa, Poland, Turkey, Brazil, Japan and India.

### Change in format

Players traditionally come into ranking events in different rounds based on their world ranking, and the top players in the sport—often the top 16 ranked players—are usually seeded through to the venue stage and do not have to play a qualification match; however, from the 2013–14 season the circuit began to transition to a flat format structure, with all the players starting in the first round. Some tournaments also have an amateur leg that makes it possible for non-members to enter WPBSA events.
Starting from the 2021-22 snooker season, the tour began to transition some of its events back to a seeded format using qualifying rounds. The Home Nations Series was the first set of events to follow this change, where the first round was played as a qualifying round for all non-Top 16 players, with those in the Top 16 — plus local nation wildcards — having their matches held over to the final venue. The UK Championship followed suit from the 2022 edition, which effectively turned the tournament into a near-identical copy of the World Snooker Championship, with the exception being frame length. While some of these changes have been criticised by lower ranked players due to qualifiers often being played without crowds and in cubicles, a reminder to some of the pre-Barry Hearn era, others have praised them, especially the format change for the UK Championship which reverted the tournament to the prestige that it had before the flat-128 draw was imposed upon it.

## Qualification

To compete on the World Snooker Tour as a professional player, a player must qualify for it. At the end of each season, a pre-determined number of players are relegated from the tour based on their performance in ranking tournaments, making way for new professionals to join the tour. There are several qualification routes for the tour: a player can gain qualification via the various events organised by the WPBSA itself or affiliate organisations (such as the WSF Championship), and a limited number of places are usually made available to players at the discretion of the governing body.
The players who retain their place on the tour are only guaranteed a place for one further season, while all other players—including those that requalify—are awarded a two-year tour card.
Following the establishment of Q School and Q Tour, the main tour now initially takes up around 128 professional players, consisting of the top 64 players from the prize money rankings after the conclusion of the previous season and another 64 players who earned a two-year tour card from both the previous year and the current year. In the 2024-25 season, 4 players were granted tour card from rankings on the one-year list, 7 from winning regional competitions (WSF, EBSA, ABSC, etc.), 4 from the Q Tour, 2 from the China Tour, 2 from the World Women's Snooker Tour (a qualification route since 2021), 12 from Q School and 1 being granted an invitational tour card (introduced in 2015 with up to 4 players eligible for ITCs), making up the 32 places to join the main tour.

### PIOS and Q Tour

Following the creation of the World Snooker Tour in the 1997–98 season, the top ranked professionals qualified automatically for places while the rest of the membership had to qualify for places through a series of qualifying schools. The qualifying schools were only held the once, and thereafter the main qualification route was via the secondary professional tour. Following the scrapping of the secondary tour, the promotion places were then allocated to the International Open Series (PIOS)—an amateur open tour organised by Pontins—for the 2005–06 season.
The amateur status of the event meant that players who had been relegated from the Main Tour and wished to compete on PIOS had to relinquish their professional membership. This had an unpopular side effect, since if players relinquished professional membership they would be unable to enter the World Snooker Championship, which was previously open to all professional members including those who do not compete on the Main Tour. Another issue was that players could not compete on PIOS while competing on the Main Tour, meaning that they were unable to safeguard their membership on the Main Tour by immediately re-qualifying via PIOS, effectively keeping them out of professional competition for a whole season should they drop off the tour. Even though PIOS was a competition in its own right, it primarily served as a Main Tour qualification route, and anticipating the streamlining of tour qualification for the 2011–12 season this unpopular contest was discontinued after the 2009–10 season. The secondary tour was brought back in 2018 and was renamed as the Q Tour in 2021-22 season.

### Q School

Q School, in contrast to the full-fledged secondary tournament Q Tour, was established in an attempt to streamline the qualification process for the World Snooker Tour through its knock-out format, and has replaced the PIOS since the 2010-11 season. A series of play-offs are run through to the quarter-final stages only. Players pay a fixed entry fee to enter all the play-off events, and there is no prize money. Each player who wins a quarter-final game qualifies for a two-year tour card on the main tour. All the players that have entered the event compete in the first play-off, and those that are not successful are automatically entered into the next play-off and so on. Q School is open to everyone, and players who have just been relegated from the World Snooker Tour are eligible to enter and if successful immediately regain their places on the tour.
Those who do not manage to qualify for the World Snooker Tour may still be entered into professional tournaments using a Q School top-up list, known as the Order of Merit. This list ranks the amateur players by their performance during the play-offs: should a tournament not consist of 128 World Snooker Tour players for any reason (such as the tournaments that ran through the 2020–21 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic), the highest ranked players on the top-up list will be invited to play in professional tournaments as amateurs. In this vein, players are encouraged to perform well, because they may still feature in World Snooker Tour events and thus have television exposure if they manage to reach the televised stages of an event that they have entered.

## List of major winners

Traditionally, the majors consisted of the three Triple Crown tournaments (World Snooker Championship, the invitational Masters and the UK Championship). As the most prestigious tournaments in snooker, they also offered the largest amount of prize fund and attracted the most media attention.
As the snooker calendar expands since the 1980s, there are an increasing amount of tournaments where the scale and prize fund are reaching the same levels as the Triple Crown events. In 2024, when the World Snooker Tour announced the addition of the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters, it was being dubbed as snooker's "fourth major" in its press release with its £2,302,000 total prize fund, an amount that closely matches the World Championship's with £2,395,000 in its 2024 edition.
The list is a selective record of several all-time winners. Active players indicated in bold.
| Player | Total | World | Masters | UK | Saudi | Winning span |
| Ronnie O'Sullivan (ENG) | 23 | 7 | 8 | 8 | – | 1993–2024 |
| Stephen Hendry (SCO) | 18 | 7 | 6 | 5 | – | 1989–1999 |
| Steve Davis (ENG) | 15 | 6 | 3 | 6 | – | 1980–1997 |
| John Higgins (SCO) | 9 | 4 | 2 | 3 | – | 1998–2011 |
| Mark Selby (ENG) | 9 | 4 | 3 | 2 | – | 2008–2021 |
| Ray Reardon (WAL) | 7 | 6 | 1 | – | – | 1970–1978 |
| Mark Williams (WAL) | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | – | 1998–2018 |
| Neil Robertson (AUS) | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | – | 2010–2022 |
| Judd Trump (ENG) | 6 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2011–2024 |
| Alex Higgins (NIR) | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | – | 1972–1983 |
| John Spencer (ENG) | 4 | 3 | 1 | – | – | 1969–1977 |
| Cliff Thorburn (CAN) | 4 | 1 | 3 | – | – | 1980–1986 |
| Ding Junhui (CHN) | 4 | – | 1 | 3 | – | 2006–2020 |
| Shaun Murphy (ENG) | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | – | 2005–2025 |
| Terry Griffiths (WAL) | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | – | 1979–1982 |
| Doug Mountjoy (WAL) | 3 | – | 1 | 2 | – | 1977–1989 |
| Paul Hunter (ENG) | 3 | – | 3 | – | – | 2001–2004 |
| Mark Allen (NIR) | 2 | - | 1 | 1 | – | 2018–2022 |