WSOP Europe 2026: New Location and Schedule

Author

Vargoso

Published

12/19/2025

Updated

12/19/2025

In 2026, the WSOP Europe series will undergo major changes. For the first time since 2017, the largest European poker festival will be held in a new location – Prague. And the WSOPE Main Event will be held with a record-breaking €10,000,000 guarantee. We'll cover these and other series changes in more detail in this article.

Second wind for WSOPE

The need for reform of the European leg of the World Series of Poker has been long overdue. We dedicated a separate article to the issue, and almost immediately afterward, the festival organizers announced major changes. The full schedule for the upcoming event was recently presented to the poker community.

The 2026 World Series of Poker Europe will be held in Prague at the Hilton Hotel from March 31 to April 12.

As a reminder, from 2017 to 2025, the series was held in the fall and exclusively in Rozvadov.

The schedule includes two guaranteed tournaments: the new European Circuit Championship NLH with a €1.5 million guarantee and the Main Event.

The guarantee for the 2026 WSOPE Main Event has been doubled to €10,000,000. In the history of European poker, there have only been two tournaments with such a guarantee, but both had significantly higher buy-ins:

€111,111 High Roller for One Drop на WSOPT 2017
€10,350 partypoker MILLIONS Barcelona Grand Final 2018

In Prague, the standard Main Event buy-in has been reduced to €5,300. However, with GGPoker support and a wide range of online satellites, it's expected that the tournament's guarantee will be covered.

Start Date	Event	Buy-in
March 31	#1: The Opener – NLHE Mystery Bounty	€1,00
	#2: PLO Mixed (Big O, PLO8, PLO)	€3,00
April 2	#3: COLOSSUS NLHE	€500
April 3	#4: PLOSSUS Bounty PLO	€500
	#5: €5,300 Main Event NLHE European Championship	€5,30
April 5	#6: NLHE Super Turbo Bounty	€2,00
April 6	#7: Monster Stack NLHE	€1,50
	#8: PLO European Championship	€5,30
April 7	#9: Rounder Cup NLHE (EU vs. Rest of World)	€2,50
April 8	#10: NLHE Freezeout	€800
	#11: High Roller 8-Max NLHE	€10,40
April 9	#12: European Circuit Championship NLHE	€1,50
April 10	#13: GGMillion$ High Roller NLHE	€25,00
April 11	#14: PLO Double Board Bomb Pot	€1,00
April 12	#15: The Closer NLHE Turbo Bounty	€2,00

Player of the Year Prizes

Along with the announcement of the 2026 WSOPE, Ty Stewart's team announced a series of steps to reform the World Series of Poker Player of the Year rankings, which became the center of a debate between Phil Hellmuth and Shaun Deeb this year.

The scoring formula remains unchanged, but now:

Results from online bracelet tournaments will not be counted.
In addition to events in Las Vegas, results from the WSOPE and WSOP Paradise will be included in the rankings.
The top 100 players in the rankings will split $1,000,000 in prize money in the form of ticket packages to series tournaments.

Conclusion

The 2026 WSOP Europe updates look like a complete reboot of the series. The move to Prague addresses several long-standing issues facing Rozvadov: logistics, capacity, appeal to recreational players, and the overall perception of the festival. The spring dates remove the WSOPE from the busy autumn calendar and eliminate direct competition with the EPT and other major series.

A record-breaking €10,000,000 guarantee with a reduced buy-in makes the Main Event extremely popular. Combined with GGPoker support and online satellites, this looks like a bet on field growth and the return of the most prestigious European poker tournament.

The Player of the Year reform, in turn, strengthens the connection between all live events of the series and makes participation in WSOP Europe and WSOP Paradise strategically important for top players.

As a result, WSOP Europe 2026 will cease to be an "add-on to Las Vegas" and become a full-fledged key event of the World Series of Poker, focused on long-term dominance in the European market.