The World Series of Poker is coming to Malta for the first time. The WSOP Circuit Malta runs September 25 to October 5, 2026 at Casino Malta in St. George’s Bay, St. Julian’s: twelve WSOP Circuit ring events, eleven days, and a $5,000 package to WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas for every ring winner. It is one of the most significant moments in European poker this year, and it is happening in a city that has been one of the continent’s most important poker destinations for over a decade without ever having a WSOP event to show for it.
That changes on September 25. poker.pro will be on the ground throughout with previews, daily articles, chip counts, and final day commentary from the Main Event final table. I have been to every Battle of Malta since 2012, I know this venue, I know this player pool, and I know what Malta does to a poker festival when the conditions are right. This one has all of them. Here is everything you need to know.
Why It Took This Long and Why It Matters Now
Malta has been one of the most important live poker destinations in Europe for over a decade, and Casino Malta has been at the center of that story since opening in 2016. The venue is situated inside the InterContinental Malta Hotel complex at Eden Place, St. George’s Bay, St. Julian’s and is the largest casino on the island. The Battle of Malta, one of the most successful poker festivals in European history, calls Casino Malta home and has grown to a record prize pool of over €6 million during the 2025 Autumn Edition, consistently drawing fields in the thousands. That growth, and the infrastructure Casino Malta has built to support it, is precisely why the WSOP chose this venue for its first-ever Malta stop.
The island’s poker ecosystem is unique in Europe. Malta has more iGaming companies per square kilometer than anywhere else on the continent. Players, industry professionals, and serious recreational grinders live there year-round. The Malta Gaming Authority is one of the most respected licensing bodies in the world. The infrastructure, the hospitality, the flight connections from every major European city, the weather in autumn. Malta has had everything a major poker festival needs for years. What it did not have until now was a WSOP ring event. That gap is closing on September 25.
The announcement came in February 2026. Casino Malta confirmed the festival and released three quotes that told you everything about the ambition of the event. Gregory Chochon, WSOP Chief Operating Officer: “As the first-ever WSOP Circuit stop in Malta, this partnership is a major milestone for live poker in the region. Hosting the series at Casino Malta combines a premier destination with the strength of the WSOP brand. Our goal is simple: to deliver a world-class event and set a new standard on the European poker calendar.”
Slawomir Switalski, Casino Malta General Manager: “Hosting the WSOP Circuit at Casino Malta is a historic moment for us.”
Apo Chantzis, Texapoker CEO: “Players can expect strong structures, professional operations, and an unforgettable atmosphere.”
Three people from three different organizations, all saying the same thing. That is not a coincidence. That is alignment, and it is the reason this first edition has a real chance of being exceptional rather than merely good.
The Venue: Casino Malta in St. Julian’s
Casino Malta opened in 2016 at Eden Place, St. Augustine’s Street, St. George’s Bay, inside the InterContinental Malta Hotel complex. It is the largest casino in Malta, covering approximately 3,000 square meters of gaming floor with 300-plus slot machines, 25 table games, and a dedicated poker operation. The InterContinental itself has 451 guestrooms, restaurants, a full-service spa, a beach, and a convention center of over 64,000 square feet. This is not a venue that was retrofitted to host a poker festival. It was built to handle events at scale.
Players who have been to the Battle of Malta in recent years will be familiar with the space. The Eden Arena within the InterContinental complex has been the site of some of the largest poker fields ever assembled in the Mediterranean region. The WSOP Circuit will use this infrastructure in October, which means the operational framework is already proven. The team that has run the Battle of Malta at this venue for the past eight years knows how to handle a large international field, which is exactly the kind of institutional knowledge that makes a first-time event run like a fifth-time event.
Hotel options for the festival include special rates at both the Holiday Inn Express and the InterContinental Malta, bookable directly through Casino Malta’s official booking links. Book early. Malta in late September is still warm, still busy, and the rooms closest to the venue fill up fast once a major festival is announced.
Texapoker: The Company Running the Show
The WSOP Circuit Malta is being organized in partnership with Texapoker, the French live events company founded and led by Apo Chantzis. If you have followed the European poker circuit over the past decade you know exactly who Texapoker is. If the name is new to you, Texapoker is the leading poker festival organizer in France, the company that has built the WSOP Circuit’s European footprint into one of the most ambitious expansion programs in the history of the brand.
In 2026 alone, Texapoker is running WSOP Circuit stops in Aix-en-Provence (April), Paris (September), Malta (September-October), Madrid (October-November), Middelkerke (November), and Sanremo (November-December). That is six stops in a single year across five countries, which is a workload that requires serious operational infrastructure and established relationships at every level of the business. Chantzis built the WPT Prime partnership in France and Italy before pivoting to the WSOP, and the transition has produced exactly the kind of growth the WSOP needed in markets where it had limited presence. Malta is the newest piece of that map.
The Events: Twelve Rings, Something for Everyone
Twelve WSOP Circuit ring events across eleven days, with buy-ins running from €300 to €2,500. Every ring winner receives a $5,000 package to WSOP Bahamas, making each event a stepping stone to the end-of-season WSOP Circuit Championship. The range and structure of the schedule are well-designed for a first-time stop: accessible enough to draw a large international field, serious enough to mean something.
The festival opens on Friday September 25 with the €300 Mini Main Event, which runs four flights across the opening weekend. At €300 it is the most accessible ring event on the schedule and will almost certainly produce one of the larger fields of the week. The €550 Seniors Event for players aged 50 and over fires Sunday September 27, a format that draws well at every WSOP Circuit stop and tends to produce a genuinely competitive and characterful final table. Also on Sunday, the €550 Mystery Bounty opens its first of three flights, with the envelope-opening drama that makes this format the most entertaining thing in live poker right now. The €300 Ladies Event runs Monday September 28.
Tuesday September 29 brings the €500 Knockout and the headline side event, the €2,500 High Roller. At €2,500 this is the highest buy-in ring event on the schedule and will draw the strongest field of the week outside the Main Event itself. The Colossus at €300 runs a remarkable six flights across the full eleven days, the longest-running event on the schedule and a deliberate attempt to capture every player who arrives at any point during the festival.
The final weekend brings three more ring events: the €1,000 Deepstack on Saturday, the only €550 PLO ring event on the schedule also Saturday, and the €400 Superstack on Sunday. The festival closes Monday October 5 with the €350 Bigstack.
The Main Event
Event #8 is the €1,500 NLH Main Event, and it is the centerpiece of the entire festival. Four starting flights run across four days: Flight A on Wednesday September 30, Flight B on Thursday October 1, and Flights C and D on Friday October 2, giving players maximum flexibility to arrive at their own pace and still make it in. Late registration extends through the first 12 levels of each starting day, which means even a Friday evening arrival can sit down and take a shot.
The €1,500 buy-in is the standard for WSOP Circuit Main Events in Europe and it sits at exactly the right price point for Malta, a destination where the combination of travel, accommodation, and a serious tournament buy-in adds up to a meaningful but manageable commitment for the international player who plans a poker trip properly. With four flights and an eleven-day festival to build traffic around it, the Main Event field should be the largest gathering of international players Casino Malta has ever hosted for a single tournament. Whoever wins it will be the first-ever WSOP Circuit Malta Main Event champion. That title does not get shared and it does not get repeated. There is only ever one first champion at a new stop.
Why Malta Works for This
The iGaming industry headquartered in Malta is a structural advantage that no other European poker destination can replicate. The island has become the European capital of online gambling, home to hundreds of licensed operators, platforms, and suppliers employing tens of thousands of people across the sector. A significant proportion of those people play poker seriously and show up to live events. The result is a permanent local player pool that blends industry insiders, serious recreational players, and semi-professionals who are within a taxi ride of Casino Malta on any given night. This is not a player pool that has to be imported for a festival week. It is already there, year-round, and it shows up in numbers when the right event fires.
Beyond the local pool, Malta’s location and infrastructure make it one of the easiest destinations in Europe to get to from anywhere on the continent. Direct flights from London, Rome, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, Warsaw, and virtually every other major European city run multiple times per day. The island has a mature hospitality sector built around year-round international tourism, which means hotels, restaurants, and transport work at scale without the friction you encounter at destinations that are still building that infrastructure. And late September in Malta is still warm enough to sit outside after a tournament session, which matters to people who are also choosing between this trip and staying home.
St. Julian’s specifically is Malta’s entertainment and hospitality hub. Casino Malta, the InterContinental, the Holiday Inn Express, the bars and restaurants of Paceville and St. George’s Bay are all within walking distance of each other. Players who have been to the Battle of Malta know exactly what that week feels like: the town fills up with poker players, the energy is good, and the combination of serious competition and an actual Mediterranean destination makes for something different from a festival held in a conference center off a motorway. That is what the WSOP Circuit is stepping into.
The 2026 WSOP Circuit Malta Ring Event Schedule
Twelve ring events across eleven days. Check out everything confirmed so far.
| Date | Time | Event |
|---|---|---|
| Fri 25 Sep | 12:30 | Event #1: €300 NLH Mini Main Event — Flight A |
| Fri 25 Sep | 20:00 | Event #1: €300 NLH Mini Main Event — Flight B |
| Sat 26 Sep | 12:30 | Event #1: €300 NLH Mini Main Event — Flight C |
| Sat 26 Sep | 20:00 | Event #1: €300 NLH Mini Main Event — Flight D |
| Sun 27 Sep | 12:30 | Event #2: €550 NLH Seniors (Ages 50+) |
| Sun 27 Sep | 14:00 | Event #3: €550 NLH Mystery Bounty — Flight A |
| Sun 27 Sep | 20:00 | Event #4: €300 NLH Colossus — Flight A |
| Mon 28 Sep | 12:30 | Event #3: €550 NLH Mystery Bounty — Flight B |
| Mon 28 Sep | 13:00 | Event #5: €300 NLH Ladies Event |
| Mon 28 Sep | 20:00 | Event #3: €550 NLH Mystery Bounty — Flight C |
| Tue 29 Sep | 12:00 | Event #6: €500 NLH Knockout |
| Tue 29 Sep | 15:00 | Event #7: €2,500 NLH High Roller |
| Tue 29 Sep | 20:00 | Event #4: €300 NLH Colossus — Flight B |
| Wed 30 Sep | 12:30 | Event #8: €1,500 NLH Main Event — Flight A |
| Wed 30 Sep | 20:00 | Event #4: €300 NLH Colossus — Flight C |
| Thu 1 Oct | 12:30 | Event #8: €1,500 NLH Main Event — Flight B |
| Thu 1 Oct | 20:00 | Event #4: €300 NLH Colossus — Flight D |
| Fri 2 Oct | 12:30 | Event #8: €1,500 NLH Main Event — Flight C |
| Fri 2 Oct | 20:00 | Event #8: €1,500 NLH Main Event — Flight D |
| Sat 3 Oct | 15:00 | Event #9: €1,000 NLH Deepstack |
| Sat 3 Oct | 19:00 | Event #10: €550 Pot-Limit Omaha |
| Sat 3 Oct | 20:00 | Event #4: €300 NLH Colossus — Flight E |
| Sun 4 Oct | 14:00 | Event #11: €400 NLH Superstack |
| Sun 4 Oct | 20:00 | Event #4: €300 NLH Colossus — Flight F |
| Mon 5 Oct | 15:00 | Event #12: €350 NLH Bigstack |
The Main Event is Event #8, a €1,500 NLH with four starting flights on Wednesday September 30, Thursday October 1, Friday October 2 (two flights). The €2,500 High Roller fires Tuesday September 29. The Colossus at €300 runs six flights across the week and will be the biggest field of the festival. The PLO event on Saturday October 3 is the only Omaha ring on the schedule. Every ring event winner receives a $5,000 package to WSOP Bahamas.
How to Qualify
GGPoker is the online partner of the WSOP Circuit and runs qualifiers for all international stops. Satellites for the WSOP Circuit Malta will be available on GGPoker in the weeks leading up to the festival, with packages covering the Main Event buy-in and accommodation. The GGPoker satellite structure typically offers entry points from a few dollars, making the Malta event accessible to players at any bankroll level who want to make the trip. Keep an eye on the GGPoker lobby for Malta-specific satellites as the festival approaches. poker.pro will be publishing qualifier guides and schedule updates as they are released.
poker.pro Coverage: What We Are Doing
poker.pro will be on the ground at Casino Malta for the full WSOP Circuit festival. Here is what we are planning:
- Pre-festival previews: Schedule breakdowns, value analysis, qualifier guides, and what to expect from each ring event as the schedule is released.
- Daily coverage: Chip counts, notable hands, bustouts, and results from every ring event throughout the eleven days.
- Main Event daily recaps: Full field updates, big stacks, notable survivors, and storylines as the Main Event progresses through its flights and into the money.
- Final day commentary: I will be at the final table on the last day of the Main Event providing live commentary and reporting as the WSOP Circuit’s first Malta champion is crowned.
- Player interviews and features: The first WSOP Circuit Malta will produce stories worth telling. We will tell them.
All coverage will be published at poker.pro throughout the festival. Bookmark the page and check back daily from September 25.
Why You Should Be There
I have been saying for years that Malta is underrated as a poker destination. The flights are easy from anywhere in Europe. The weather in late September is still warm enough to be genuinely pleasant without the summer peak season crowds. The iGaming professional pool in the local field means the overlay opportunities are real. The Battle of Malta fields have proven repeatedly that Maltese players and Malta-based residents show up in serious numbers. And now the WSOP brand brings an international draw that will pull players from markets that do not normally make the trip to Malta for a poker festival.
The first edition of any WSOP Circuit stop at a new venue is a specific kind of opportunity. The fields are typically smaller than they will be once the event is established, which means the value is better. The structures at Texapoker events are strong. The venue is proven and the team running it knows what they are doing. The ring winner packages to WSOP Paradise add genuine value on top of the standard prize pool. And whoever wins the first-ever WSOP Circuit Malta Main Event wins a piece of history that no one can take away.
I will be there. poker.pro will be there. The WSOP is putting a new pin on the map of European poker. September 25, Casino Malta, St. Julian’s. See you at the tables.
- Article originally produced at poker.pro.
