The seventh and final Q Tour event of the regular season will take place this week at the Landywood Snooker Club in Walsall.
Running from February 26th to March 1st, there is plenty to play for as the race to see who can obtain the potentially lucrative main tour spots heats up.
Four professional cards are up for grabs in total from the Q Tour, and one of them will be confirmed by the end of Sunday’s play.
The top-ranked player on the Q Tour rankings following Event 7 will be rewarded with a two-year stint in the pro ranks for the upcoming 2026/27 and 2027/28 seasons.
Currently in pole position to avail of this opportunity is Jamie Clarke, who previously enjoyed a spell as a professional from 2018 to 2025 – reaching the last 16 of the World Championship in 2020.
Clarke started his campaign back as an amateur slowly before capturing back-to-back Q Tour titles in Events 4 and 5, taking him to the summit of the leaderboard.
The Welshman boasts a lead of 4,380 points over veteran Peter Lines, but there are 10,000 ranking points on offer for a tournament win so the race hasn’t been run just yet.
In fact, six players in total still have an opportunity to end the regular Q Tour season as the number one.
In addition to Clarke and Lines, Hammad Miah, Oliver Sykes, Craig Steadman, and Stuart Carrington could all end the campaign on top.
For Miah, of course, it doesn’t really matter whether he achieves that or not as he is already guaranteed his promotion back to the main tour through his recent success at the WSF Championship in Bulgaria.
If he were to end in first position, then presumably the player in second place would benefit from the automatic promotion from the Q Tour instead.
There is precedent for this as recently as last year, when Zhao Xintong finished in first place but then won the World Championship and kept his main tour ranking points, so the automatic Q Tour spot went to Dylan Emery.
Anyway, 31 year-old Clarke has things in his own hands and would be guaranteed to finish in first if he were to reach the final of Event 7.
Further down the Q Tour rankings, there is also still a lot to play for even if their challenge for automatic promotion has ended.
That is because the 16 highest-ranked players who haven’t otherwise secured their pro statuses will later contest a global play-off tournament to determine the outcome of three more main tour cards.
This includes the likes of Ashley Carty, Ashley Hugill, Snooker Shoot Out champion Alfie Burden, Peter Devlin, and Sean O’Sullivan.
Currently outside the cut-off point are other familiar names like Andrew Higginson, Barry Pinches, and Daniel Womersley.
The play-off event, which will also feature champions from the Global Q Tour, is due to take place from March 15th to 17th in Spain.
The draw for Q Tour Event 7 is available here (snooker.org).
2025/26 Q Tour Rankings
Before Event 7
1. Jamie Clarke – 30,220
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2. Peter Lines – 25,840
3. Hammad Miah – 24,600 (WSF Championship winner)
4. Oliver Sykes – 23,240
5. Craig Steadman – 22,230
6. Stuart Carrington – 21,090
7. Simon Blackwell – 19,910
8. Ashley Carty – 19,335
9. George Pragnell – 16,560
10. Patrick Whelan – 16,120
11. Mark Joyce – 13,790
12. Ryan Thomerson – 13,485
13. Ashley Hugill – 13,160
14. Alfie Davies – 12,835
15. Alfie Burden – 12,410
16. Mykhailo Larkov – 11,835 (WSF Junior Championship winner)
17. Peter Devlin – 11,800
18. Alex Millington – 11,540
19. Sean O’Sullivan – 11,520
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20. Andrew Higginson – 10,365
21. Oliver Briffett-Payne – 10,365
22. Luke Pinches – 10,295
23. Barry Pinches – 9,910
24. Hayden Staniland – 9,285
25. Zachary Richardson – 8,635
26. Callum Beresford – 8,160
27. Daniel Womersley – 8,110
28. Umut Dikme – 7,605
29. Nicolas Mortreux – 7,605
30. Mark Lloyd – 7,510
31. Denys Khmelevskyi – 7,440
32. Riley Parsons – 7,440
Featured photo credit: WST
