Burns played at the venue stage of six ranking events in the 2015–16 season, the most in a single year of his career so far. He won three matches to play in the Australian Goldfields Open and beat Xiao Guodong 5–3 in the first round which saw him play in the last 16 of a ranking event for the second time, but he lost 5–2 to Judd Trump. At the Paul Hunter Classic he recorded victories over Ryan Causton, Sanderson Lam, Martin O'Donnell and Thor Chuan Leong to make the quarter-finals, where he was defeated 4–0 by Mark King.&lt;ref name="2015/16"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; A week later he beat King 6–2 to qualify for the International Championship, but lost 6–3 to Mark Williams. Burns saw off Aditya Mehta 5–1 and John Higgins 5–3 to make his debut at the German Masters and was edged out 5–4 by Michael Holt in the first round. The final ranking event Burns qualified for this season was the China Open and, after coming through a wildcard round, he whitewashed Peter Ebdon 5–0, before losing 5–3 to Stuart Bingham. Burns reached the final qualifying round for the World Championship, but was heavily defeated 10–2 by Ebdon. His end of season ranking of 62 is the highest of his career to date and the first time he has been within the top 64.