This event has a random draw, and a new draw is made before each round. Therefore only the first round draw can be published ahead of the event and WST has now made it available:
Unibet British Open 2026 Draw: Murphy To Face Evans
Shaun Murphy will take on Reanne Evans when he starts the defence of his Unibet British Open title in Cheltenham, with the first round draw for the event now available.
CLICK HERE FOR THE DRAW AND THE MATCH SCHEDULE FOR THE QUALIFYING ROUNDS
Murphy beat Anthony McGill in the final last year and will aim to win the Clive Everton Trophy again at the world ranking event which runs from August 31 to September 6 at the Centaur Arena at Cheltenham Racecourse.
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The tournament has a random draw which means that star names can go head-to-head from the opening round. Most round one matches will take place in a qualifying event on July 23 and 24 in Leicester, but fixtures involving the top 16 seeds have been held over to Cheltenham. They are:
Defending champion Shaun Murphy v Reanne Evans
Four-time Crucible king John Higgins v Hossein Vafaei
World number one Judd Trump v Dylan Emery
World Champion Wu Yize v Liu Hongyu
All-time greatest Ronnie O’Sullivan v Mateusz Baranowski
Mark Williams v David Gilbert
Zhao Xintong v Oliver Brown
Neil Robertson v Pang Junxu
Kyren Wilson v Florian Nuessle
Mark Allen v Wang Xinbo
Ding Junhui v Anton Kazakov
Barry Hawkins v Deng Haohui
Xiao Guodong v Jiang Jun
Mark Selby v David Lilley
Chris Wakelin v Luca Brecel
Si Jiahui v Ashley Carty
The match schedule for Cheltenham will be announced after the qualifiers. The event will have extensive live coverage in the UK on 5, with the full list of broadcasters to be announced soon.
The draw may be random but there is no clash between two top sixteen members, which, of course, would have not been good commercially… luck was on the side of WST there 😎1
- or was i? ↩︎