Asia's live poker season has moved to Korea and Taiwan — and skipped Manila entirely

For years the shorthand for live poker in Asia was Manila. The 2026 calendar says otherwise.

The Asian Poker Tour turns twenty this year, and its season announcement — datelined Manila, which makes the point sharper — set out five festivals in three destinations: the Jeju Classic on Jeju in January and February, APT Taipei in April and May, APT Incheon in August, APT Jeju in September and October, and the APT Championship in Taipei from 13 to 29 November. Korea and Taiwan. Nothing in the Philippines.

The finale is the largest thing on the tour's history: 209 events over seventeen days at the Red Space venue in central Taipei, run with the Chinese Texas Hold'em Poker Club, with a USD 5 million Main Event guarantee. It opens with a National Cup Championship priced at TWD 16,000 with TWD 20 million guaranteed — an unusually cheap door into a pool that size, with satellites from TWD 3,300.

Korea carries the rest. APT Jeju is running now at the LES A Casino in Jeju Shinhwa World, 135 events across thirteen days to 7 October, with a KRW 2.2 billion Main Event guarantee; its opening Korea National Cup turned a KRW 200 million guarantee into a KRW 358 million prize pool from 474 entries. The World Poker Tour then brings WPT Seoul to the INSPIRE resort in Incheon from 5 to 10 November, at a KRW 1,750,000 buy-in.

The two countries are not equivalent for players, and the difference is who is allowed in the room. Korea's festivals are held inside foreigner-only casinos: LES A admits players aged 19 and over, free of charge, but a Korean passport holder needs proof of emigration and a signed confirmation letter at the counter. Taiwan has no casino industry at all, so the poker is played in event spaces — Red Space accepts local identification cards and sets the minimum age at 18, which means Taiwanese residents can play a major festival at home.

And Manila? We checked both flagship Entertainment City resorts on their own sites. Okada Manila names poker once, in a list of casino table games, with no poker room page and no tournament calendar. Solaire publishes a full table-game guide in which the only poker is Lunar Poker — a house-banked game where you face the dealer, not other players. Neither resort advertises player-versus-player poker. That does not prove nothing is dealt in Manila, but it does mean a visitor cannot currently plan a trip around what these two resorts publish.

This is general information about where tournaments are scheduled, not legal advice about playing in any of these countries.