Milkins began the 2012–13 season by qualifying for the Wuxi Classic by beating Liu Chuang and Ryan Day. Once at the venue in China he came through the wildcard round and then defeated Andrew Higginson 5–3, world number two Judd Trump 5–3 (after being 1–3 down) to reach the quarter-finals where he was on the wrong side of a 5–3 scoreline against Ricky Walden.&lt;ref name="2012/13"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; After this Milkins lost in the qualifying draw of the Australian Goldfields Open and in the first round of four consecutive ranking events. He bucked the trend at the Welsh Open by scoring 4–1 and 4–2 wins over Mark Williams and Sam Baird, but lost 1–5 to Ding Junhui in the quarter-finals. Milkins followed this up by reaching the second round of both the World Open and the China Open, losing to Mark Allen and Stuart Bingham respectively.