After failing to qualify for the Australian Goldfields Open and exiting both the Shanghai Masters and International Championship in the first round, Brecel then beat Hossein Vafaei 6–1, Anthony McGill 6–4 and Robin Hull 6–2 to reach the fourth round of the UK Championship.&lt;ref name="2015/16"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; He subsequently lost to Matthew Selt 6–4 after being 3–1 up in the interval. After beating Zhao Xintong 5–2 and Kurt Maflin 5–3 he reached his first quarter-final of the season soon afterwards at the German Masters, where he recovered from 4–2 down to defeat Mark Joyce 5–4, closing the match with a 102 break. Brecel then won a scrappy game 6–3 in the semi-finals against Kyren Wilson to become only the second European player from outside the UK and Ireland, after Tony Drago from Malta almost 20 years ago (when he was defeated by Stephen Hendry at the same stage of the 1997 International Open), to play in a ranking event final and the first one from Belgium. He would lose it 9–5 to Martin Gould, but targeted a top 20 world ranking before the end of the season. He lost in the final of the Snooker Shoot-Out to Robin Hull. Brecel was beaten in the fourth round of the Welsh Open 4–2 by Ding Junhui and, after losing in the first round of three successive ranking events and failing to qualify for the World Championship, he finished the year at 30th in the world, still the highest he has ended a campaign.