£1m Guaranteed GUKPT Grand Final Schedule Released

The tournament schedule for the GUKPT Grand Final has now been released, with £1m guaranteed across the 11-day festival. Beginning not long after the penultimate Blackpool leg, the GUKPT Grand Final runs from 20th-30th November at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino in London.

Throughout the 2-decade history of the tour, the Main Event of the Grand Final has usually had a bigger buy-in than the rest of the legs. Last year that was changed and it cost £1,100+£150 to enter, the same as at most of the regular legs, but for 2025, the higher price point has been re-established. 

The Main Event costs £1,800+£200 to enter and carries a £500,000 guarantee, with a further half a million assured across the rest of the festival. The reigning champion is Niall Campbell from Ireland, who took down the £89,000 first prize at the G Casino in Luton, as the Vic was closed for refurbishment last winter. 

Now the Grand Final has been restored to its rightful home at the Edgware Rd casino, which has a fresh new look, that has wowed most that have visited.

• Read More: Gang Wang Style Victory at Refurbished Victoria Casino

Schedule Highlights

In addition to the £300+£40 Mini Main, there is also a £675+£75 Midi-Main, which is a higher buy-in equivalent to The Opener, which is staged at some GUKPT festivals. Both of these have multiple starting days and £150,000 guarantees on their prize pools.

There’s a strong focus on Omaha at the GUKPT Grand Final, with a £1,100 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller, which doesn’t run at any other GUKPT venues. It takes place on Tuesday 25th November and there are also two other PLO sides. On Thursday 20th November there’s a £250 4/5/6 Card PLO and on Sunday 30th, a £150+£150+£30 4 Card Bounty PLO takes place.

The £2,300+£200 NLH High Roller, a £200 Turbo,  the £150 Seniors and the £500+£50 Grand Final Cup complete the eleven-event schedule for the last GUKPT festival of 2026.

How to Qualify

There are both live and online routes to winning your way into events at the GUKPT Grand Final festival. During the festival itself there are live satellites into the Main Event, the High Roller and the Midi Main Event. These are run as target cashout satellites, whereby players are awarded seats when their stack reach a predetermined target size.  The schedule for these can be found later in this article. 

There are also online satellites running daily at Grosvenorpoker, which award prizes as Live Event Credit, which can be used to buy-into any tournament at the Grand Final. Live credit never expires, so it can also be saved to use at a later date at almost any other live poker tournament within the Grosvenor Casinos estate. 

Online satellites typically cost at least £30 to enter, with prizes awarded in £250, £1,000 or £1,250 chunks. There are also feeders, which enables players to qualify for much less, costing £1 or £5 to get on the satellite ladder.

• Read More: Bryan Taylor Wins GUKPT Edinburgh Main Event

GUKT Grand Final Main Event Info

As per the regular legs of the tour, the £500,000 guaranteed Main Event has three starting days, two run with one hour blinds levels, plus a turbo flight, which uses a 20-minute clock. As always, players starts with 20,000 chips and late registration remains open until the start of Day 2. Re-entries are unlimited per flight and they play ten levels on each starting day.

The Midi and the Mini

Both the £750 Midi and the £340 Mini Main Events have four starting flights each and take two further days to reach their conclusions. The Midi has two flights that run on 60-minute clocks, plus a Turbo flight (20-mins clock) and a Hyper Turbo flight (15-mins clock). Each carries a £150k guarantee and players start with 20,000 chips. In both events registration remains open until the start of Day 2. As per the Main Event, re-entry is unlimited in all flights and 10 levels are played on each starting day.

Other Multi-Day Side Events Schedule

Both the High Roller and the Grand Final Cup only have one starting day each, but will take two days to play out. There’s no guarantee on the High Roller, but there is a £50,000 one on the Grand Final Cup.

Omaha and One Day Hold’em Side Events Schedule

Not everyone can afford the time to spend two days in the poker room. If you’re one of those people, there are several tournaments that start and finish on the same day. All the Omaha tournaments are one-day affairs and there’s a Seniors and a £200 NLH Turbo that also fall into this category.

Live Satellite Schedule

Most of the live satellites taking place during the festival week target the Grand Final Main Event and have 5 seats guaranteed each. However there are also a few non-guaranteed satellites to the High Roller, plus a satellite to the Midi Main Event, on the day before the festivals begins.

Previous GUKPT Grand Final Winners

The GUKPT began one year after the European Poker Tour and like most poker tours at the time, it was created with a Grand Final to end each season, where the cost to play was higher than during the regular legs. In the first season the Grand Final buy-in was £3,000 and it was won by Michael Ellis for £197,600.

Ellis’s the record for winning the biggest 1st place prize in a GUKPT Main Event stood for 14 years, only being surpassed once, in 2021 during the post-lockdown mini-boom, when Trung Moc beat Yucel “Mad Turk” Eminoglu heads up to bank £265,350.

The buy-in was reduced after the first three seasons, first to £2,625 and then to £2,125, changing again to £2,000 in 2021, post lockdown. Other winners of the tour’s most prestigious title include Tony Cascarino, who took his second GUKPT crown in 2009, Sam Grafton and double winner Benjamin Winsor. Who will join the list this year? Could it be you?