The Jeju Poker Festival is back for 2026, and the two tours behind it have decided that last year's version was not nearly big enough. KPC Poker and the Red Dragon Poker Tour will run a combined 123 trophy events at LES A Casino from October 28 through November 11, with three headline tournaments carrying KRW 3.88 billion in guarantees between them.
That is a 15-day festival, up from 12 days in 2025, with 36 more trophy events than last year's edition. The 2025 festival drew players from 38 countries across 87 events and paid out more than KRW 13.1 billion. The 2026 schedule is built on the assumption that those numbers were a floor rather than a ceiling.
Two Tours, One Schedule
The structure is simple and sensible: KPC Poker takes the front half of the festival, Red Dragon takes the back half, and players can treat it as one long trip or two separate ones.
KPC Poker arrives in a new guise. KPC Poker and King Poker Cup have merged under the single KPC Poker banner with a rebranded black-and-gold identity, and the tour's flagship on the island is the KPC Main Event, a KRW 1,300,000 buy-in ($929) tournament with a KRW 880 million guarantee. It runs five Day 1 flights from October 28 to 30, with Day 2 on October 31 and the final table on November 1.
Red Dragon, meanwhile, has been around since 2008. It started in Macau and expanded into the Philippines and Jeju over the years, and in 2026 it introduces RDPT PLUS — branded "Poker Elevated" — a format built around deeper starting stacks, longer levels and more decision time. The Red Dragon Classic Main Event (KRW 2.5 million / $1,786) carries a KRW 1.2 billion guarantee and runs from November 2 to its final day on November 5. The Red Dragon Plus Championship (KRW 4 million / $2,857) is the festival's biggest event with a KRW 1.8 billion guarantee, playing four Day 1 flights from November 6 to 8 before finishing on November 11.
The High Roller and Mixed-Game Layers
Above the Main Events sits a genuine high roller ladder. The KPC High Roller is KRW 5 million ($3,571), the KPC Super High Roller KRW 7 million ($5,000), the Red Dragon Prestige High Roller KRW 8 million ($5,714), and at the top, the Red Dragon Prestige Super High Roller at $12,000 on November 10-11. The Dragon Egg Mystery Bounty ($3,214) is the schedule's marquee bounty format, running three Day 1s from November 9.
The mixed-game lineup is the quiet standout. Alongside the expected PLO and Big O events, the schedule includes FL Drawmaha Mix, Dealer's Choice in both 6-game and 18-game formats, NL and PL 2-7 Draw, 6 Card Archie, PL Courchevel Hi-Lo, a 10-Game Championship and a T.O.R.S.E. Championship, mostly at KRW 500,000 to KRW 1.5 million. For anyone who has been building a mixed-game repertoire beyond Hold'em and Omaha, this is one of the deepest non-Hold'em schedules in Asia.
Why Jeju Became Asia's Poker Capital
Jeju's rise is not an accident of marketing. Three factors did it.
The first is access. Jeju operates a visa-waiver programme covering a long list of nationalities, which makes it dramatically easier to reach than most Asian gaming jurisdictions for players who would otherwise be filing paperwork weeks in advance. For Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese and Southeast Asian players in particular, it is a short flight and a walk through immigration.
The second is licensing. South Korea permits foreigner-only casinos, and Jeju has a concentration of them. LES A Casino sits inside the Jeju Shinhwa World resort complex, which means hotel rooms, food and floor space are all in one place — the logistical precondition for running 123 events across 15 days without the schedule collapsing.
The third is prestige by association. Triton Poker has repeatedly chosen Jeju for its super high roller series, and the island has hosted Asian Poker Tour stops as well. When the biggest buy-ins in the game keep landing in the same place, the mid-tier festivals that follow inherit both the infrastructure and the credibility.
Mid-Tier Festivals Are a Different Product
It is worth being clear about what this festival is and is not. A Triton stop is a closed ecosystem of 50 to 100 of the wealthiest players in poker competing for seven-figure first prizes. The Jeju Poker Festival is the opposite proposition: a broad schedule where the bulk of the events sit between KRW 300,000 and KRW 1 million — roughly $214 to $714 — with a high roller ladder bolted on top for those who want it.
That matters for anyone weighing the trip. You do not need a high stakes bankroll to make the numbers work here. A player with a $3,000 tournament budget can play meaningful volume across two weeks, and the Milestone Satellites running almost daily at KRW 300,000 to KRW 550,000 feed directly into the KPC Main Event, the Baby Dragon Classic, the Red Dragon Classic and the Dragon Egg.
Planning the Trip: Practical Considerations
Bankroll First
The single most common mistake on a festival trip of this length is treating the schedule as an all-you-can-eat buffet. With 123 events and turbos firing at midnight, the temptation to keep registering is structural. Set a total festival budget before you book, divide it by the number of days you will actually be there, and treat that as a hard daily ceiling. Sound bankroll management matters more on a 15-day trip than on a weekend, because the failure mode is slow attrition rather than one bad session.
Use the Satellite Routes
The Milestone Satellite structure — "win your seat at 60,000 chips" for the KPC Main Event, 70,000 for Baby Dragon, 80,000 for the Red Dragon Classic, 100,000 for the Dragon Egg — is a genuinely efficient way in. At KRW 300,000 to KRW 550,000 a shot, two or three satellite attempts still cost less than a direct Main Event buy-in, and they run at times that do not conflict with the flagship flights. If you are new to festival play, our guide to tournaments covers how to approach satellite equity, which is a fundamentally different calculation from an ordinary MTT.
Expect Different Structures
Asian festival schedules lean harder into turbos, hyper turbos and super hyper turbos than European or American equivalents — there are super hypers at midnight on most nights here. That compresses variance into short windows and rewards players comfortable with short-stack and push-fold play. The RDPT PLUS events run the other way, with deeper stacks and longer decision time, so the festival effectively contains two different games. Know which one you are entering, and consider whether the live versus online rhythm of multi-day play suits you before committing to a Main Event flight.
Early Bird Packages
Six Early Bird packages are available until October 10, with accommodation at either the Marriott or the Landing Hotel inside Jeju Shinhwa World. The Red Dragon Double Crown package bundles entries to both the KRW 2.5 million Classic Main Event and the KRW 4 million Plus Championship plus six nights, starting at KRW 6.83 million at the Landing Hotel and KRW 7 million at the Marriott. Mixed Game Festival packages come with KRW 8 million or KRW 10 million in tournament vouchers, and a High Roller Journey package bundles three of the biggest high rollers with accommodation.
Organisers are also running a JPF player shuttle with a schedule to be announced, plus dedicated VIP support for international players covering transport, hotel rates and general enquiries, with English-language support on the floor.
The Bigger Picture
Asia's live poker calendar has thickened considerably over the past two years, and the autumn window is now genuinely congested — which is exactly why the festival is being pitched as one leg of a wider fall swing rather than a standalone destination. For players in Europe or North America weighing a long-haul trip, the maths only works if you can stack multiple festivals into one flight.
What Jeju offers that few places can match is duration. Fifteen days, 123 trophies, a mixed-game schedule with real depth, and a buy-in range that runs from $214 to $12,000 under one roof. If you have been playing real money poker online and looking for a first serious live festival, this is an unusually forgiving place to start — and an unusually deep one to finish.