Hammad Miah won the 2026 WSF Championship on Sunday with a dramatic 5-4 triumph over Wang Xinbo in the final in Bulgaria.
With victory, Miah receives a potentially lucrative two-year professional ticket to compete on the World Snooker Tour for the upcoming 2026/27 and 2027/28 campaigns.
It marks a return to the big-time for the 32 year-old Englishman, who dropped off the main circuit last year.
Wang, who also lost in the WSF Junior Championship final, began the contest strongly and took the opening couple of frames to establish an early 2-0 lead.
But the more experienced Miah, who was on and off the main tour between 2013 and 2025, reaching a career-high ranking of number 69 in the world, responded with a break of 68 in the third frame and duly restored parity by taking the fourth.
The next two frames were traded between the pair, with China’s Wang scoring a run of 83 and Miah firing back with a 78 to keep things tight.
With the tension ramping up, the frames began to get scrappier and Miah duly moved in front for the first time at 4-3.
But back came Wang to force a deciding frame, which led to an understandably nervy climax with so much on the line.
The early exchanges of the ninth frame were tense but Miah was presented with a golden scoring opportunity that he ultimately took full advantage of to get his hands on the prestigious international amateur trophy.
Earlier in the tournament, Miah emerged from his round-robin group with a perfect record of four wins from his four league fixtures.
A brace of 4-0 wins launched his challenge in the knockout rounds, and he reached the quarter-finals with a 4-2 defeat of Chang Yu Kiu.
Miah then survived a tough test in the quarters, outlasting Wang Yuhang in 4-3 thriller before thumping Stuart Carrington 4-0 in the last four.
The title-deciding clash was a close affair that ebbed one way and then the other, but Miah eventually came through it to safeguard his return to the main tour.
For 18 year-old Wang, it will be hugely disappointing to have missed out in agonising fashion in both the main event and the junior event, but time is on his side to reach the higher echelons of the game in the future.
The WSF Junior Championship was won last week by Mykhailo Larkov, the Ukrainian also receiving a two-year main tour card.
2026 WSF Championship
Selected Results
Round of 16
Ryan Davies 4-0 Mark Joyce
Sebastian Milewski 4-2 Kaylan Patel
Joel Connolly 4-2 Prin Ratmukda
Wang Xinbo 4-3 Dean Young
Stuart Carrington 4-1 Ashley Hugill
Ashley Carty 4-0 Rodion Judin
Hammad Miah 4-2 Chang Yu Kiu
Wang Yuhang 4-0 Simon Blackwell
Quarter-Finals
Ryan Davies 4-1 Sebastian Milewski
Wang Xinbo 4-0 Joel Connolly
Stuart Carrington 4-2 Ashley Carty
Hammad Miah 4-3 Wang Yuhang
Semi-Finals
Wang Xinbo 4-3 Ryan Davies
Hammad Miah 4-0 Stuart Carrington
Final
Hammad Miah 5-4 Wang Xinbo
Featured photo credit: WSF
