GUKPT's 20th season heads to Blackpool with a GBP 500,000 Grand Final to follow

The Grosvenor UK Poker Tour is down to its last two stops of a season that took in twelve festivals across seven cities, and the schedule for the second-to-last one is now out in full.

GUKPT Blackpool runs from 29 October to 8 November 2026 with thirteen numbered events. The Main Event, event #8, costs GBP 1,100 plus a GBP 150 fee and guarantees GBP 250,000 over three starting flights on 5 and 6 November, the last of them a late turbo. Behind it sit a GBP 250 Mini Main guaranteed at GBP 100,000 over five flights, a GBP 1,500 High Roller with a 100,000 starting stack and another GBP 100,000 guarantee, a GBP 1,000 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller at GBP 25,000, and the GBP 550 GUKPT Cup at GBP 50,000. Adding up the guarantees printed against the thirteen numbered events gives GBP 610,000 for the festival.

The structure tells you who each event is aimed at. The Mini Main's GBP 100,000 guarantee against a GBP 250 buy-in is the widest ratio on the schedule and it runs early in the week, before the Main Event crowd arrives. The High Roller goes the other way: 100,000 chips on a 40-minute clock, the deepest start of the week. The GUKPT Cup is slotted to begin an hour after the Main Event's Day 2, which gives anyone knocked out something substantial to move into rather than a drive home.

Then comes the Grand Final. It returns to The Victoria in London — the Vic, which also hosted the January and April legs of the same season — from 19 to 29 November. The Main Event costs GBP 1,800 plus GBP 200 and guarantees GBP 500,000, double the guarantee of a standard GUKPT leg and the season's largest by both measures. The event-by-event schedule for the Grand Final has not been published yet.

A look back at the season calendar shows how wide the buy-in range has become. Glasgow Merchant City in August and Luton over August and September both ran GBP 560 Main Events with GBP 100,000 and GBP 150,000 guarantees; Leeds, which finished on 4 October, was GBP 1,000 for GBP 200,000; most other stops were GBP 1,250 for GBP 250,000. The two GBP 1m Main Events of the year came at the UK Open in Coventry in February and at the GUKPT's leg inside Goliath in July, the tournament Grosvenor describes as the largest live poker tournament outside Las Vegas. Grosvenor's calendar names Damon Burch-Hyson as the 2026 Goliath champion, and Goliath's 2027 edition is already dated 22 July to 1 August.

One practical note for anyone planning to satellite in: Grosvenor's online feeder satellites, which start at GBP 1, pay out in live event credit rather than a seat in a named tournament. The credit is taken to the casino cash desk and used as full or part payment towards any GUKPT tournament, and a bigger ticket can be used for a cheaper event with the difference given back as venue tournament credit. Grosvenor states that live event tickets won online do not expire.