Q School (snooker)

The Q School is an amateur snooker competition which serves as the qualification school for the World Snooker Tour.

Overview

Q School is established in 2011 as an attempt to streamline the qualification process and is held annually before the start of the professional season, where amateurs and ex-professionals who dropped out of the top 64 in world rankings in previous seasons can compete for a two-year tour card to play on the Main Tour. It replaced the amateur tournament International Open Series, the former second-tier snooker series organised by the English Association of Snooker and Billiards.
In 2022, a Q School branch in Bangkok was established for entrants from the Asia-Oceania region. 2 qualifying places were awarded to the winners whilst discontinuing qualification through Order of Merit in Q School Europe.
Players pay a fixed entry fee to enter the play-off events, and there is no prize money. Winners of quarter-finals will be joining the World Snooker Main Tour, whilst the top 32 players of Q School Europe along with other junior players and Asia-Oceania qualifiers will be qualified for the second-tier WPBSA Q Tour.

Qualifiers

For each event, the players who qualified for the World Snooker Tour are listed.

Statistics

Craig Steadman and Alexander Ursenbacher have qualified from Q School on a record 4 occasions. Paul Davison, Fraser Patrick, Duane Jones and Ian Burns have qualified through the event on three occasions.
Michael Georgiou, Jordan Brown, David Gilbert, Fan Zhengyi, Fergal O'Brien and Zhao Xintong are the six Q-School qualifiers to win a ranking event. Zhao is the only one to have won multiple ranking events. O'Brien, Brown and Gilbert had been professionals before qualifying through Q School.
The youngest qualifier through Q School was Lei Peifan at 15, while Peter Lines was the oldest, qualifying at 51 in 2021.