Ronnie O'Sullivan brought the curtain down on the 2025-2026 snooker season by comprehensively defeating Joe Perry 10-4 to claim the 2026 JenningsBet World Senior Championship, the first time he has participated in the tournament and thus his first world senior title, and the eighth time he has claimed a world title at the Crucible, in addition to his seven world professional championship titles.
O'Sullivan claimed the title thanks to an impressive display in the second session of the final in which, leading 5-3 from Sunday afternoon's opening session, he made five centuries after Perry, who had won the Welsh Open in 2022 and had reached the semi-final of the World Professional Championship in 2008, had claimed the first frame of the evening on the black to go just one behind O'Sullivan.
The tournament saw the largest number of players taking part, including defending champion Alfie Burden, 2015 world champion Stuart Bingham, and two-time world finalist Ali Carter. One player who particularly impressed was 66-year-old Roger Farebrother, who defeated the 'Tornado' Tony Drago 4-2, before narrowly losing 4-2 to Ali Carter. Other results in the first round included victories for 1997 world champion Ken Doherty, who defeated Gerard Greene in a dramatic match which he won on a black-ball shoot out (if a match was level, instead of going to a deciding frame, a black ball shoot out would decide the winner); Reanne Evans, the first woman to participate in the seniors world championship, lost out 4-2 to Aaron Canavan, who had won the title in 2018 and had finished runner-up to Burden last year.
The second round was unfortunately marred by problems with the table cloth on table 1 when Dominic Dale and Matthew Stevens started their match and were then forced to wait until table 2 was available before completing their match, with Stevens eventually coming out on top as a 4-2 victor. While Robert Milkins emerged triumphant in a black-ball shoot out against 'People's Champion', Jimmy White, defending champion Alfie Burden was forced to play behind closed doors against Igor Figueiredo, with the Brazilian whitewashing Burden 4-0. Due to the problems which had affected table 1, at short notice, Burden's match was played in a practice room and not in the main arena, much to Burden's frustration.
The quarter-finals saw Milkins comfortably overcome Figueiredo 4-1, O'Sullivan overcame stubborn resistance from Peter Lines winning 4-2 in an entertaining match which saw both players giving a standing ovation from the Crucible crowd, Perry defeated twice world finalist Stevens 4-1, while Craig Steadman won a black-ball shoot-out to knock out Ali Carter.
In the first semi-final, Milkins had more than enough chances to have caused a surprise against Ronnie O'Sullivan, but, ultimately, the Rocket got stronger as the match wore on and the Milkman seemed to get weaker, and O'Sullivan got through to the final winning 7-5 and, after Steadman had begun the match impressively by taking a 0-3 lead, Perry eventually took a hold of the match, and he too came out on top as a 7-5 winner.
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