The World Snooker Championship is an annual snooker tournament founded in 1927 and since 1977 played at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The tournament is now played over seventeen days in late April and early May, and is chronologically the third of the three Triple Crown events of the season since the 1977–78 snooker season, when the UK Championship was first held. The event was not held from 1941 to 1945 because of World War II or between 1958 and 1963 due to declining interest from players.