WPT Australia 2026 Kicks Off: The Star Sydney's Historic Dual-Championship Festival

WPT Heads Back to Sydney With a Bigger Festival Than Ever

The World Poker Tour is back at The Star Sydney, and this year's trip Down Under is unlike anything the region has hosted before. The World Poker Tour is set to return to The Star Sydney for the WPT Australia festival scheduled to run Sept. 10-30, 2026, featuring two marquee championship events, highlighted by the AUD $1,500 buy-in WPT Prime Australia Championship from Sept. 17-22 and the AUD $5,000 buy-in WPT Australia Championship from Sept. 24-30.

That structure marks a genuine first for the market. The WPT has confirmed both a WPT Prime Championship and a WPT Australia Championship at The Star Sydney from September 10-30, 2026, marking the first time the dual-championship format has come to Australian soil. Instead of one blowout weekend, the festival spreads its biggest guarantees across two full championship weeks, giving grinders two realistic shots at a WPT title in the same trip.

The Schedule at a Glance

• The schedule is stacked, with 36 events, including the $5,000 Championship Event, $1,500 Prime Championship and the $1,150 Australian Poker Cup to name a few.
• Alongside the two championship events, the schedule includes an AUD $500 Ladies Australian Championship on September 15-16, plus PLO, bounty, and mixed-format events.
• The AUD $1,500 buy-in WPT Prime Australia Championship runs September 17-22, followed by the AUD $5,000 buy-in WPT Australia Championship from September 24-30. Final tables for both events will be livestreamed.
• Satellites run throughout the festival, offering entry into both championships at a fraction of the buy-in.

Why This Stop Matters

Australian WPT stops have quietly built serious momentum. Last year's WPT Australia Main Event drew 600 runners for a prize pool of $1,961,000 USD as Alan Pham defeated Jordan Bautista to win $364,958. Adding a second full championship this year raises the ceiling on what the festival can pay out, while keeping the buy-ins split across two accessible tiers rather than one crowded field.

The venue itself is part of the story. Moving the action to the breathtaking Darling Harbour, the operator is raising the stakes by introducing a historic dual-championship format to the Australian market. For a region that's watched live series ebb and flow in recent years, a 21-day WPT stop with livestreamed final tables is a strong signal that Sydney is becoming a fixture on the international calendar rather than a one-off.

What It Means for Players

Most readers of this blog aren't flying to Sydney — they're grinding ClubGG and ClubWPT Gold from home. But WPT festivals like this one still matter to online-only players for a few reasons:

• Brand visibility drives promos. Live festivals typically bring a wave of online satellites, freerolls, and Player of the Year pushes on the WPT's digital properties. Keep an eye on ClubWPT Gold's tournament lobby in the run-up to and during the festival window.
• It's a good excuse to tighten up your own tracking. Watching structured, well-run championship poker is a great reminder that your own results deserve the same discipline — real win-rate numbers, not gut feel.
• Volume adds up fast during series season. If you're multi-tabling ClubGG or ClubWPT Gold sit-and-gos and MTTs while the live circuit is buzzing, it's easy to lose track of how a specific stretch of sessions actually went.

That last point is exactly where a dedicated ClubWPT Gold tracker earns its keep. Since ClubWPT Gold doesn't allow an on-screen HUD, the only way to get real win-rate, graph, and hand-history data is to capture the hands after the fact and import them into a tracking tool like DriveHUD 2 — so you can review a big session (or a whole series-week binge) with actual numbers instead of memory.

Bottom Line

WPT Australia's dual-championship format at The Star Sydney is a notable step up for the region, and it's worth watching whether the online side of the WPT ecosystem mirrors that energy with its own promotions over the next three weeks. Whether you're rail-watching the Sydney final tables or just putting in volume online, the fundamentals stay the same: play solid, track honestly, and let the numbers tell you where to improve. New to logging your sessions properly? Our setup guide walks through getting hand capture running in under ten minutes.