Talk:2026 German Masters

The draw format for this page seems to be incorrect. The last 64 documented here is actually Round 3 of Qualifying with some matches held over to the final venue.

The implication of the current set up of the page is that its the same as last year, but if you compare last years’ qualification matches to this yeaes’ qualification matches, you can clearly see there’s three rounds of qualifying, not two, suggesting that there’s a main draw starting from the Last 32, it just so happens that some Qualifying Round 3 matches are being held over to Germany. Snooker.org appears to corroborate my understanding of the draw, thus this page needs to be updated.

@HurricaneHiggins @Nigej thoughts welcome. — CitroenLover (talk) 15:07, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

It a bit of an oddity. In the last-64 round (called Round 3) there are 16 matches arranged for 8 Jan while the other 16 are to be played in Germany from 26 January. It reinforces my view that we shouldn't be taking about "qualifying rounds", we should be talking about "qualifying matches". We don't really need to discuss whether there's 2 or 3 qualifying rounds, it's pretty meaningless it seems to me. 16 of the matches in Round 3 are "qualifying matches", the other 16 are "held over" to the final stages. How we organise the brackets is an interesting conundrum. Probably the easiest approach (1) is to add Round 3 to the qualifying section and note that half of the matches are to be held over. Or we could (2) leave it as it is and note that 16 of the last-64 matches were actually played earlier. Or we could go for option (3) and put the matches where they ought to go. 16 in qualifying and 16 in the Main Draw section - that's a bit more complicated. Nigej (talk) 15:29, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

It's a conundrum indeed. Note that the dates for the qualifiers were originally listed as 5 to 7 January and they are still that way on snooker.org. On the calendar page on WST.tv, they are now given as 5 to 8 January. I will change our page to the latter dates. Otherwise, agreed with @Nigej in that it looks like half of the round of 64 is now being played as "qualifiers" in Sheffield and the rest held over to Berlin. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 18:04, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks both @HurricaneHiggins and @Nigej, I agree its a conundrum and no idea how to best present it in a way that fits with normal convention: do we have any previous tournament we can use as an example of this happening? I'm not sure if its feasible, but perhaps we could change the main draw bracket for L64 to only show the held over matches (and label it as "held over matches"), and place those ones to be played at Sheffield in the Qualifying round section? Otherwise, alternative is placing all the L64 matches into the Qualifying round section and note the held over matches.

Also, additional note is that we still don't know the frame lengths for any of these matches, as snooker.org hasn't noted them, which normally it would: perhaps thats an indication as to why the qualifying rounds were extended by one day, are the matches longer than they used to be, or less tables at Berlin?

@Lee Vilenski would appreciate any guidance from yourself on this one. -- CitroenLover (talk) 18:59, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

I think we should potentially change the "main draw" to "main stage draw" in section headers to show that those were matches held at the main stage. The difference between an event with 128 players and one with 64 players but also one round of qualifying is quite vague without WST or otherwise labelling it as a qualification round(s). Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:36, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

I think we need to see how WST frames this round. If they call the 16 last-64 matches (played in Germany) "held over" that would help us. Nigej (talk) 07:33, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

Happy Christmas!

I don't think this has been done this way before. The reason behind it is, I think, a potential conflict with the Championship League. Elliot Slessor, Tom Ford, Pang Junxu, Joe O'Connor, Hossein Vafaei, Jackson Page, Ali Carter, David Gilbert, and Yuan Sijun all have qualifying round three matches scheduled for 8 January. Any of them could potentially qualify for Group 4 of the Championship League which will also be played on 8 and 9 January. A trip from Sheffield to Leicester in order to play both is fairly easy, weather permitting, while getting from Berlin to Leicester would be tougher.

How do we resolve it for the article? I have no idea, since this seems to be a unique situation.

Also snooker.org unusually has no seedings for this tournament. We normally rely on Hermund Årdalen for this data, so where did the seedings in the article come from?  Alan  (talk) 11:55, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

The seedings for most of these tournaments is usually Top 16/Top 32 at a defined cut-off point, with the usual adjustments for the defending tournament champion and the reigning World Champion -- if they are different individuals. Its quite likely snooker.org assumed (as well as the editor who set up this page to begin with) -- in the initial absence of any information from WST, or perhaps through sources they have -- that this tournament would be run like last years' edition (Top 32 held over to venue, two qualifying rounds for everyone else, basically an extended version of a Home Nations tournament but using BO9s from the outset).

Since then though, its been announced there are going to be three rounds of qualifying, with the matches involving the Top 16 in QR3 being held over to the final venue, thus meaning the tournament has moved to a hybrid of its previous format. The previous format involved two rounds of qualifying with everyone starting in Round 1 (no matches held over), with 2024 moving to a format involving higher seeded players being held over to the final venue, similar to events played in China (initially this was just Top 8 seeds being held over, before last years' edition adopted the Home Nations' format). This years' edition appears to be a mixture of having seeded players held over to the final venue (Top 16 seeds), but with the same round they are playing in also being a qualifying round for Seeds 17-32.

This would potentially suggest that there are less tables at the Tempodrom this year, or matches played in Berlin will be longer than the usual. Unfortunately, this is just speculative right now, as WST hasn't announced anything, other than the qualifying rounds will be best of 9 frame matches. We will only know what happens once the main stages of the tournament get underway. However, conflict with a non-WST event will not likely be a reason, as if it was, matches involving these players would just be shuffled to ensure that there is no conflict. Players are not required to enter the invitational Championship League, as it is just paid match practice for top players, not a real WST event. --CitroenLover (talk) 14:59, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

When has it "been announced there are going to be three rounds of qualifying, with the matches involving the Top 16 in QR3 being held over to the final venue"? Nigej (talk) 15:22, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

You say that "conflict with a non-WST event will not likely be a reason". Of course it's a reason. A player can't be in two places at once.  Alan  (talk) 16:51, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

We should really not be speculating here. Have we really not got any sourcing that says qualifying anywhere? Anyone checked Snooker Scene? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:35, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

@Nigej it says so here: https://www.wst.tv/news/2025/december/16/2026-Machineseeker-German-Masters-Draw/ and the WST Match Centre showing the draw for the qualifying tournament [since its tracked separate from the main stages] shows the same. — CitroenLover (talk) 21:47, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Both WST and snooker.org show the last 64 as qualifying round three, with 16 matches to be played on 8 January in Sheffield, and 16 matches held over to Berlin. So one solution would be to replace the two "32TeamBracket-Info" brackets with a single bracket starting from the last-32, and then add in the last-64 as a qualifying round three above the qualifying tables, using "div col" as we have done previously, split between the held-over matches and those to be played in Sheffield.  Alan  (talk) 08:57, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

...so I have put together how this would look in my sandbox. Opinions?  Alan  (talk) 11:28, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

@CitroenLover, Nigej, Lee Vilenski, and HurricaneHiggins: Since there have been no objections to my proposed solution over the past few days, and since this WST page clearly shows three rounds of qualifying in Sheffield, I have decided to be bold and make the edit. Please feel free to revert it if you think it is inappropriate.  Alan  (talk) 10:25, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

@AlH42 no issues from me, although in the qualifying section, I would replace the "TBD"'s with a list of potential opponents: people might interpret the TBD's -- unintentionally -- to mean that its a randomised draw, when its just a standard knockout draw. -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:54, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

Could be done, but the problem is that each TBD would have to be replaced with three names. For instance for Pang Junxu, his TBD would need to be replaced by "Thepchaiya Un-Nooh OR Farakh Ajaib OR Yao Pengcheng". I'll have a think about it. There's no rush.  Alan  (talk) 21:35, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

@CitroenLover: I have added your suggestion to the qualifying round three in my sandbox, but I don't like it much (makes it too big) so I think it should stay as it is for now.  Alan  (talk) 15:11, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

@AlH42 yes agreed thats too much. Perhaps we could just say "Winner of QR2 Match XX", where XX is the match number in the draw that player would face? Ultimately not fussed really, as in a couple of weeks, it will be immaterial lol. -- CitroenLover (talk) 18:12, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks @AlH42. Just catching up now after Christmas. This looks like a good solution and much appreciation for doing this over the holiday period. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 22:44, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

@AlH42 as i said, players aren’t obligated to play in the invitational CL Snooker event, if they can’t participate in the event, they usually just withdraw and the next player on the rankings who wants to enter will replace them. — CitroenLover (talk) 21:47, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

I am well aware that players often withdraw from the CLS and are replaced. However, it is probable that the WST and CLS try to co-ordinate scheduling to avoid this kind of conflict.  Alan  (talk) 08:36, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski pretty sure Snooker Scene isn’t running any more, did you mean something else eg snooker.org? — CitroenLover (talk) 21:47, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

no, it's still a thing. See November issue on sale. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:45, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

You learn something new every day, but I don't think a lot of people use it nowadays: I remember Nick Metcalfe was an editor for it, but apparently ditched it after a short period. I very much doubt the new editors have the same contacts within WST that the late Clive Everton would have had to report on snooker more directly, so find it very unlikely that any recent issue would have any details about the German Masters format: if anything you're more likely to get the inside track on tournaments from the Talking Snooker or Snooker Scene podcasts (if you write into them of course). -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:07, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

@AlH42 @HurricaneHiggins @Lee Vilenski @Nigej Just to tie up any queries around this topic, WST considers the held over matches as "Round One" on their website (specifically, Round One/Heldover). The Last 32 is deemed as Round 2 and Last 16 as Round 3. The scheduling shows four tables are being used (so two less than last years' edition which had 6 tables). --CitroenLover (talk) 16:47, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Are there any other sources that list this? How is snooker.org handling it? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:48, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Looks like WST are going to call the held over matches "Round 1" eg https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-media-assets-v2.gc.wstservices.co.uk/d6879960-88be-11f0-b101-f5aab0a512c8.pdf However here https://www.wst.tv/matches/861076a8-ff1d-421f-8562-f8cc2cbdbdd7 the 16 matches already already played are called "Round 3" (of the qualifiers I presume). As usual with WST it's all a mess. We could move the 16 held-over matches up to the main draw section. Nigej (talk) 19:24, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

@Nigej WST treat qualifying rounds as separate from main stages, rather than just a continuation (the exception would be the open events in China, where realistically its a flat-128 draw with the first round almost entirely played in the UK -- with just a few top players having their matches held over to the venue -- so only 70-odd players have to go to China, rather than 128). So Round One in a qualifying round isn't the same as Round One played at the venue, hence WST and others now use the designator QR1 to mean "Qualifying Round One" to differentiate it from R1 at the final venue. We could move the held-over matches to the main draw, but I don't know how flexible the template is for showing this detail -- similar to the Tour Championship I guess? -- CitroenLover (talk) 14:55, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

@CitroenLover @Lee Vilenski @AlH42 @Nigej The WST has also stated: "The qualifying rounds run from January 5th to 8th in Sheffield. Players starting in round one could need to win three matches to make it to the Tempodrom. However, third round matches involving the top 16 seeds have been held over to the final stages." Here, the matches currently underway are referred to as third-round qualifying matches rather than round one matches. Since there is no consistency around this within the WST, in the Summary section we can just have sections for held-over qualifiers, last 32, last 16, etc. Our goal should be to make sure it's clearly explained and makes sense to a general readership. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:29, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi @AlH42 @CitroenLover @Lee Vilenski @Nigej, this section looks a bit inconsistent, given that the Sheffield qualifiers played on 8 January are divided into subsections for matches played at 10:00 and 14:30, while the Berlin held-over qualifiers (played over two days) are all grouped together. I would strongly prefer to see the 8 January matches also grouped together, similar to the Berlin held-over qualifiers. From a long-term encyclopedic perspective, it's really not relevant whether a match took place at 10:00 or 14:30. However, readers may wonder why the Sheffield section is sub-divided by time while the Berlin section is not. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:30, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

No, let's not group by time. We don't do that for anything outside of the shootout (which I'm not really happy about either). We aren't here to denote times like this (see WP:TVGUIDE). It's fine to list in prose if we are doing matches chronologically, but not like it is here. Let's just give the info per round. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:35, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, @Lee Vilenski, and I very much agree about not grouping by time. I'm not sure how to merge these 10:00 and 14:30 subsections, which appear to be separate tables ... anyone willing to tackle that? HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:46, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Is those changes suitable? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:10, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I ageee, we shouldn’t put times in. The only time to do that is in the Shoot-Out, due to its one-frame format. — CitroenLover (talk) 13:15, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Like I said earlier, I don't even really like it there. The arguments here work there as well. The day after the event, who cares if the first round match was at 1pm or 10pm? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:17, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for handling that @Lee Vilenski! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 13:23, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

No drama. It's a little sad we have two different types of display for this (a list of results and a table below it) though. Shame it isn't uniform. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:08, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, @Lee Vilenski. It would indeed be ideal if we had a more consistent format. Unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with the intricacies of table layouts to understand why it's being done this way. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:53, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

@HurricaneHiggins I think its just being done to make it easier to showcase which matches were played in what session, but no real need to do that in qualifiers imo. It started either earlier this season, or sometime last season, but since no one called it out as being a problem, it was allowed to continue. I don't mind WP:BOLD being done, but it should be sensible changes (as an example, cleaning up the syntax of performance tables to reduce character counts is a sensible thing to do)

@Lee Vilenski I take your point, however timings matter more for the Shoot-Out due to the 10-minute frame format and the random draw, so it makes sense to do it there, but not elsewhere imo (at least in the way its been done on those pages for quite some time, so if anything, the Shoot-Out pages are consistent with itself). It's more clear for readers to know when the sessions were played, especially when its the Day 4 evening session when 4 rounds (L16, QF, SF and Final) are played one after another, so giving the timings of the sessions helps for anyone reading the page later. -- CitroenLover (talk) 18:22, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, @CitroenLover. If longstanding conventions in formatting these tables has indeed been changed without any discussion or consensus, that's surely an issue. This whole "Be Bold" concept is being taken too far, IMO. It's being interpreted as a licence to ignore other editors and disregard how things were done in the past. I would have called this out previously if I had noticed, but I mainly focus on editing the prose sections, not the tables, so I'm only seeing this now that you are pointing it out. And if it was done to highlight which matches were played in which sessions, that's another problem. As @Lee Vilenski has already said, nobody cares whether a qualifying match took place in the morning or the afternoon. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 02:04, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

@HurricaneHiggins the biggest problem is many of these kinds of minor changes would have started happening ages ago, where no one would have taken issue with it. In the case of the Shoot-Out, there is no reasonable argument to remove the times from the articles, since the pages are at least consistent with other Shoot-Out pages, even if it isn’t consistent with other snooker tournament pages [imo, if all yearly edition pages on a specific tournament are consistent with each other — eg all Shoot-Out pages use the same format — its less of an issue to me since there’s already a standard there].

that being said, i don’t know who started putting session times into qualifying headers in recent years. There’s definitely no need for that and would be fine with it being removed in those cases. I don’t think WP:BOLD has been taken too far, however there are cases of people — throughout the years — clearly reverting edits on pages just because they want the status quo to be kept, which isn’t helpful either and doesn’t improve the wiki pages, especially in a section of Wikipedia with few editors as it is. May be worth taking that specific topic to the project page though.

in the case of this article, the German Masters, there is no need to sub-divide qualifying matches per session. It can be kept as one whole section. — CitroenLover (talk) 12:13, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks @CitroenLover. My position would be that we should, if possible, maintain consistency with previous articles unless there's a good reason to do otherwise. Major changes to the established formats should be proposed on the project page and discussed with other editors. Agreed that there is zero rationale for noting session times in articles (outside the Shoot-Out, per established convention) and let's all watch out for this. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 12:35, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Some good news. Reaching out on Reddit has provided some images from this event (a lot, actually). They can be seen here; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles?limit=500&user=Andrej146&ilshowall=1 Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:58, 11 February 2026 (UTC)