The World Championship of Online Poker kicked off on PokerStars on September 6, 2026, launching a 25-day marathon that will run through September 30. WCOOP has been the sport's online centerpiece since 2002, and this silver-anniversary edition is built on a scale that still looks enormous even by modern standards: 121 numbered events comprising 350 individual tournaments, spread across Low, Medium and High buy-in tiers, with roughly $40 million in total guarantees on offer.
Opening day set the tone immediately. The $5,200 NLHE 6-Max Championship carried a $400,000 guarantee, one of eight standalone Championship events scattered through the schedule alongside the series' six Main Events, which converge on September 27 and 28 with a combined $6.5 million guaranteed.
A Quarter-Century of WCOOP
Twenty-five years is a long time in online poker, an industry that has seen operators come and go, black-out days, licensing upheavals, and a near-total reinvention of how players access the game. WCOOP has outlasted all of it, and PokerStars is treating this edition as a milestone rather than just another September series. Every one of the 350 tournaments will award a trophy to its winner, meaning 350 players will be able to call themselves WCOOP champions by the time the series closes — the same trophy-for-every-title approach PokerStars used for this year's SCOOP.
The anniversary also arrives at a moment of structural change for the operator. This is the first WCOOP run since the launch of the PokerStars Network, which merged Betfair Poker UK's player base onto PokerStars software, meaning UK grinders are now drawing from the same global pool as everyone else on dot-com. For a series that depends on field depth to hit its guarantees, added liquidity going into WCOOP's 25th year is a meaningful backdrop.
Context matters here too. The 2025 edition generated close to $74 million in prize money from more than 763,000 entries across 378 tournaments, after starting with $65 million guaranteed. This year's schedule is comparatively leaner on paper — 350 tournaments against $40 million guaranteed — but the format is unmistakably the same one that has defined the online game for a generation: familiar tournament brands, a broad spread of buy-ins, and championship-level fields at the top.
The Numbers Behind the Series
WCOOP 2026 spans buy-ins from $5.50 up to a $25,000 Super High Roller, and Poker Industry PRO counted at least 18 distinct variants across the schedule, including No-Limit Hold'em, Pot-Limit Omaha, PLO8, HORSE, Razz, Badugi, 8-Game, and both forms of 2-7 lowball draw. That breadth is central to what makes WCOOP different from a typical online series — it isn't just a NLHE festival with a few side dishes, it's a genuine test of the full family of poker games, which is exactly why the poker hand rankings and format fundamentals matter more here than in almost any other online event on the calendar.
The six Main Events form the spine of the series and land on back-to-back days:
- $109 NLHE Main Event (Low) — $1.25 million guaranteed — September 27
- $1,050 NLHE Main Event (Medium) — $2 million guaranteed — September 27
- $10,300 NLHE Main Event / NLHE Championship (High) — $2.5 million guaranteed — September 27
- $109 PLO Main Event (Low) — $100,000 guaranteed — September 28
- $1,050 PLO Main Event (Medium) — $250,000 guaranteed — September 28
- $10,300 PLO Main Event / PLO Championship (High) — $400,000 guaranteed — September 28
Running the NLHE and PLO flagships on consecutive days, rather than stacking every buy-in tier of a single game on one Sunday, spreads the biggest fields out and gives grinders who want to fire multiple Main Events a realistic path to doing so without an impossible overlap.
Notably, the $10,300 NLHE Championship's $2.5 million guarantee is down from the $5 million it carried in some previous years — a sign that PokerStars is calibrating expectations at the true high-stakes end even as the series expands in breadth elsewhere. It remains one of the single biggest guarantees of the year regardless, and a magnet for the high stakes community that treats WCOOP as a can't-miss stop.
Opening Weekend Championships
Beyond the Main Events, eight additional Championship tournaments are distributed across the full 25 days, giving mixed-game specialists and grinders outside the NLHE mainstream their own marquee targets:
- $5,200 NLHE 6-Max Championship — $400,000 guaranteed — September 6
- $1,050 HORSE Championship — $50,000 guaranteed — September 7
- $1,050 Razz Championship — $40,000 guaranteed — September 10
- $1,050 NLHE Progressive Knockout Championship — $500,000 guaranteed — September 13
- $1,050 Triple Draw Championship — $40,000 guaranteed — September 15
- $1,050 PLO8 Championship — $100,000 guaranteed — September 17
- $215 Women's NLHE Championship — $10,000 guaranteed — September 20
- $2,100 8-Game Championship — $80,000 guaranteed — September 24
Kicking off with the $5,200 NLHE 6-Max Championship on day one signals what the rest of the series has in store: fast, high-value tournaments where survival at a shorthanded table demands sharper aggression and tighter ICM awareness than a full-ring event of the same buy-in. For players building toward the Main Events, these early Championships also double as a proving ground and a bankroll opportunity before the series' biggest weekend arrives.
Sunday Million's Anniversary Twist
One quirk of the 2026 calendar is that the summer-long Sunday Million 20th Anniversary tournament folds directly into WCOOP. That $109 phased event has been running since late June, with daily Phase 1 flights feeding into a Phase 2 finale that lands on September 6-7 — right as WCOOP opens. Its $5 million guarantee is the single largest of the entire series, even though it isn't a newly launched WCOOP tournament so much as an existing summer promotion whose conclusion happens to land during the opening days. Notably, it's also the only Sunday Million on this year's schedule; the recurring $109/$215/$530 weekly editions that have appeared in past WCOOPs are absent this time.
Familiar Brands, New Scale
The schedule leans on tournament brands regulars will recognize: the Thursday Thrill, Super Tuesday, Sunday Warm-Up, Sunday Kickoff, Saturday KO and Wednesday Surprise all return in WCOOP dress, layered with Mystery Bounty and Progressive Knockout formats that have become staples of modern tournaments scheduling. PokerStars is also running satellite pathways throughout the series — including Power Path packages and WCOOP-branded Spin & Go tournaments — to keep the buy-in floor accessible even as the marquee events command five-figure entries.
Alongside the tournament schedule, PokerStars is running $100,000 in leaderboard prizes split across Low, Medium and High tiers plus an overall Player of the Series race, and a $500,000 Lucky Dip promotion handing out tournament tickets throughout the series.
What This Means for Players
For recreational players, the sheer range of buy-ins is the real story. With events starting at $5.50, a WCOOP trophy is realistically within reach without staking a bankroll on a five-figure buy-in, and the satellite structure built around Power Path and Spin & Go tickets gives another route in entirely. Anyone newer to tournament poker should treat the low-tier Championships and Main Event as a chance to apply sound bankroll management principles rather than firing outside their roll chasing a trophy; the series runs 25 days, and there will always be another flight.
For grinders planning volume across the full series, site selection matters as much as game selection. Players who split time across multiple rooms during a busy series like this should weigh factors like available rakeback and loyalty terms, since heavy volume across 350 tournaments adds up fast in rake paid regardless of results. It's also worth checking how quickly a site processes cashouts on a five- or six-figure score, particularly for players outside the US market navigating the mixed regulatory landscape that now defines online poker.
The mixed-game Championships deserve attention too. HORSE, Razz, Triple Draw, 8-Game and PLO8 all draw smaller, tougher fields than their NLHE counterparts, which cuts both ways — the variance of beating a smaller sample is higher, but the fields are generally softer per-entrant among players who haven't specialized in every discipline. Anyone considering a run at the $1,050 HORSE or 8-Game Championships should shore up format fundamentals before firing, since a single leak in an unfamiliar game can bleed a stack in the very rounds a Hold'em specialist find automatic.
Ultimately, the 25th WCOOP is less a departure than a reaffirmation. The guarantees have been recalibrated in places, the schedule is a touch smaller than 2025's 378-tournament record, and the operator's platform has changed with the PokerStars Network merger — but the core proposition that built the series a quarter-century ago is intact: a monthlong stretch where practically every format and stake finds its championship, and where a single good run can produce a career-defining title. With three weeks of the series still to play out after this opening weekend, the biggest fields and the $6.5 million Main Event weekend are still to come.