WST has published the draw and format for the 2025 Shanghai Masters
Shanghai Masters 2025 Draw
The world’s top 16 players are all in the field for the 2025 Shanghai Masters, to take place from July 28 to August 3.
Click here for the match schedule
The prestigious invitation event, with a top prize of £210,000, features the top 16 in the Johnstone’s Paint World Rankings, plus the next four highest ranked Chinese players as well as four amateur wild cards.
Judd Trump beat Shaun Murphy in the final last season, and in his opening match this time he will meet either Neil Robertson or Pang Junxu. Zhao Xintong will play his first match as World Champion against either Chris Wakelin or a wild card. Ronnie O’Sullivan, a five-time winner of the event, will be up against either Barry Hawkins or Wu Yize.
So … here is how the first rounds are scheduled (hours are CET)
28 July 2025 – 3 h30
Match 5 – Si Jiahui v wildcard -> Match 13 – Winner plays Kyren Wilson on 29 July, 8h
Match 6 – Barry Hawkins v Wu Yize -> Match 14 – Winner plays Ronnie O’Sullivan on 30 July 13h30
28 July – 8 h
Match 7 – Zhang Anda v Yuan Sijun -> Match 15 – Winner plays Ding Junhui on 29 July 13h 30
Match 8 – Chris Wakelin v wildcard -> Match 16 – Winner plays Zhao Xintong on 30 July 13h 30
28 July 2025 – 13 h 30
Match 1 – Neil Robertson v Pang Junxu -> Match 9 – Winner plays Judd Trump on 29 July, 13 h 30
Match 2 – Shaun Murphy v wildcard -> Match 10 – Winner plays Mark Selby on 29 July, 8h
29 July 2025 – 3 h 30
Match 3 – Xiao Guodong v Lei Perfan -> Match 11 – Winner plays John Higgins on 30 July, 8 h
Match 4 – Mark Allen v wildcard -> Match 12 – Winner plays Mark Williams on 30 July, 8 h
Matches are best of 11 up to and including the QFs. SFs are best of 19 and the Final best of 21.
The event will be followed by and on snooker.org
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
As it stands for Provisional Crucible Rankings currently for next year’s World Snooker Championship in 2026 you will have to go through the qualifying rounds to qualify for the World Snooker Championship so the upcoming snooker season 2025/26 getting underway end of this month. You will need get some good results in the big tournaments coming up in Saudi Arabia for Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters and China in August for Wuhan Open then be back to China in October for the Xian Grand Prix then in November for the International Championship the first triple crown tournament the UK Championship of the 2025/26 season at York Barbian Centre as you need go deep in these tournaments to give yourself a chance of been in the Top 16 seed for the Crucible as these big tournaments will be crucial for you as you will need to go deep in them either the Semi-Finals or Final to get these valuable ranking points to get into the Top 16 for the 2026 World Snooker Championship.
Ronnie O’Sullivan is currently 17th in the “Race to the Crucible”!
We have been there before …in 2011/12 he entered the German Masters knowing that he basically needed to win it to avoid qualifiers at the World, and he did. Of course he was much younger then.He then went on to win the World Championship
Interesting. At that time I didn’t follow ranking lists yet. But with the prize structure I would have thought this is unprecedented. In my opnion, after working with Steve Peters and so on, there is a chance he would play the qualifiers anyway, if there were no tip or other issues. But still, the threat of Ronnie having to qualify for the Crucible at the start of this season feels similiar to the one of Brecel being relegated at the start of last season.