The World Poker Tour has released the schedule for the 2026 WPT World Championship Festival at Wynn Las Vegas, and the fifth edition of the series is built on a broader mix of events than ever. A total of 85 tournaments are scheduled between November 27 and December 21, with buy-ins stretching from $400 to $25,800 and formats ranging from standard No-Limit Hold’em to Pot-Limit Omaha and mixed games.
The established headline events are back, including the $10,400 WPT World Championship and the $1,100 WPT Prime Championship. The most notable additions are a new $400 Super Gold Million with a $3 million guarantee and $1 million in mystery-bounty money added by the WPT to the World Championship. Together, those changes give the festival both a new lower-buy-in centrepiece and an extra incentive for players who make deep runs in the main event.
More than three weeks of tournaments at Wynn
The festival begins on November 27 with a $600 No-Limit Hold’em event carrying a $400,000 guarantee. It closes more than three weeks later with a $600 No-Limit Hold’em Turbo. Between those points, Wynn will host multiple events on most days, creating a schedule intended to cover a much wider range of bankrolls than a high-roller-only festival.
That range is one of the defining features of the calendar. The cheapest listed buy-ins are $400, while the upper end reaches $25,800. The gap between those numbers gives recreational qualifiers, regular mid-stakes players and high-stakes professionals a reason to be in the same venue during the same period. The source explicitly contrasts that breadth with the WSOP Bahamas schedule running at a similar time, which is described as being more heavily aimed at high rollers.
Variety also comes from game selection. No-Limit Hold’em remains central, but the programme includes Pot-Limit Omaha, T.O.R.S.E., Mixed Triple Draw, Omaha Hi-Lo and Big O. That matters because a festival lasting more than three weeks can become repetitive if every day is another hold’em structure. Mixed-game and Omaha events give specialists their own targets and allow all-round players to build a schedule without leaving the property.
WPT Prime Championship returns with $5 million guarantee
The $1,100 WPT Prime Championship runs from December 5 to 12 and carries a $5 million guaranteed prize pool. It has become one of the festival’s major anchors because the buy-in is far below the World Championship while the field can still produce a seven-figure first prize.
Aaron Johnson is the defending champion after topping 9,876 entries in the previous edition and earning $1,010,400. That field size shows why the Prime Championship occupies an important place in the schedule. It is accessible enough to attract a very large number of players, but significant enough that winning it changes a career.
For many visitors, the Prime event may also be the centre of a longer festival trip. Its dates overlap with the period leading toward the World Championship, making it possible for players to compete in a major event, move into side tournaments and then decide whether to enter or qualify for the $10,400 main event.
The new Super Gold Million brings a $3 million guarantee
The biggest new tournament on the schedule is the $400 Super Gold Million, running from December 10 to 14 with at least $3 million guaranteed. It is a live version of the Gold Million concept associated with the ClubWPT Gold poker site, but the live tournament triples the guarantee referenced in the source.
WPT executive tour director Matt Savage confirmed that the Super Gold Million is exclusively a live event. That is useful clarification because the name connects directly to an online product. Players are not being asked to navigate a hybrid format or complete part of the event on the internet; the competition itself takes place at Wynn.
A $400 entry paired with a $3 million guarantee immediately sets a very different target from the high-roller events elsewhere on the festival. The WPT is effectively using scale rather than buy-in to create a major prize pool. If the guarantee is met through entries alone, the event needs a very large turnout, which makes it one of the clearest attempts on the schedule to create a mass-participation tournament.
$1 million in mystery bounties changes the World Championship
The $10,400 WPT World Championship remains the biggest event of the series, but its format now includes an extra $1 million in mystery-bounty money supplied by the tour. The added bounty pool is reserved for players who go deep enough to reach the stage at which those pulls become available.
Mystery bounties change the incentives of a tournament because eliminating another player can carry value separate from the normal payout ladder. The source does not specify the distribution of the added $1 million, so the exact bounty sizes should not be assumed. What is confirmed is that the WPT itself is adding the money rather than taking it out of the ordinary prize pool.
The World Championship begins December 13 with the first of three Day 1 flights. Day 2 is scheduled for December 16, and the livestreamed final table is set for December 20. That puts the main event near the end of the festival but leaves enough time for earlier tournaments, including the Prime Championship and Super Gold Million, to build momentum around the venue.
A strong benchmark from the 2025 championship
The defending World Championship winner is Schuyler Thornton, who dominated the previous year’s final table to collect $2,098,456. The 2025 event drew 1,865 entries. Those numbers give the 2026 edition a clear benchmark, although the new mystery-bounty addition means the player experience will not be identical even if the field size is similar.
The championship has quickly become one of the WPT’s defining annual events at Wynn. Entering its fifth year at the venue, the festival now has enough history for repeat champions, defending winners and field-size comparisons to matter, while still being young enough for the schedule to change significantly from one edition to the next.
Opening-day schedule shows the range
| Date | Time | Event | Guarantee |
| Nov 27 | 11:00 a.m. | No Limit Hold’em Day 1A ($600 Buy-in) | $400,000 |
| Nov 27 | 12:00 p.m. | T.O.R.S.E. ($600 Buy-in) | – |
| Nov 27 | 1:00 p.m. | PLO ($400 Buy-in) | – |
| Nov 27 | 5:00 p.m. | No Limit Hold’em Day 1B ($600 Buy-in) | $400,000 |
The first day alone illustrates how the festival mixes formats and price points. The schedule starts at 11 a.m. with the opening flight of the $600 No-Limit Hold’em event carrying a $400,000 guarantee. At noon there is a $600 T.O.R.S.E. tournament, followed by a $400 Pot-Limit Omaha event at 1 p.m. A second flight of the opening No-Limit Hold’em event begins at 5 p.m.
That pattern is likely to be familiar throughout the festival: a larger hold’em event provides the main traffic while specialist tournaments run alongside it. Players can therefore arrive with very different schedules in mind. Someone focused on a single game can build around one event, while a mixed-game regular can move from one variant to another over multiple days.
Ladies Championship also returns
The $1,100 Ladies No-Limit Hold’em Championship is scheduled to begin on December 13 with a $250,000 guarantee. Its place on the calendar means it starts on the same day as the World Championship’s first opening flight, giving the final phase of the festival several major tournaments at once.
The source does not list further structural details for the Ladies Championship, but its return alongside the Prime and World Championship events reinforces the idea that the WPT is building the festival around several recognisable anchors rather than one main event surrounded by small side tournaments.
What stands out about the 2026 festival
The schedule’s main strength is range. There are 85 events, more than three weeks of play, multiple variants and buy-ins that begin at $400. At the same time, the festival still has the prestige and high-stakes ceiling provided by the $10,400 World Championship and events reaching $25,800.
The Super Gold Million broadens that range further by putting a $3 million guarantee behind a $400 tournament. The added mystery-bounty money does something different: it refreshes the flagship event without changing its familiar $10,400 entry point. One innovation aims at volume; the other adds extra value to a deep World Championship run.
For players planning Las Vegas trips late in the year, the complete calendar matters because the festival is not built around a single weekend. The Prime Championship runs December 5-12, the Super Gold Million takes place December 10-14 and the World Championship begins December 13. Those overlaps allow players to move between major events while keeping alternatives available if one run ends early.
The WPT World Championship Festival has therefore grown into a series with several centres of gravity. The championship remains the prestige event, but the Prime, Ladies Championship and new Super Gold Million each serve different parts of the field. With 85 tournaments and a wider mixture of formats, the 2026 schedule is designed to make Wynn a destination for far more than the players prepared to put up $10,400 for one tournament.
That structure also gives players more ways to define a successful trip. Someone may never enter the World Championship but still have a major target in the Prime or Super Gold Million; a mixed-game specialist may build an entirely different schedule around T.O.R.S.E., draw or Omaha events. The festival’s scale is therefore not only about the total number of tournaments. It is about creating enough distinct paths through the calendar that different kinds of players can treat the same three-week stretch as their main year-end series.