The Global Poker Awards are no more, can anyone replace them?

Barry Carter reflects on the loss of the industry awards show and ponders if somebody might fill the hole left by them?

Sad news for the poker world, especially those of us who work in the industry, last week as the Global Poker Awards announced the ceremony would not return in 2026.

The main reason cited was simply the amount of time it takes to prepare the event. The awards are by the Global Poker Index and Hendon Mob, a small team who are already incredibly swamped with work managing two of the biggest databases in poker.

The Global Poker Index will still award trophies in its various Player of the Year races.

I've often written about the awards and what categories I would have liked to see, but most of all, I felt that we took them too seriously. I always tried to stand up for the team involved because they were always a thankless chore. Everyone felt slighted when they or their category were left out, and it just looked like a hell of a lot of work.

The awards were very much a poker industry awards, and in recent years, more of a poker content awards. It is industry folks and content creators who are clearly most upset with this news. I feel blessed personally that I finally managed to bag a pair in the final awards after never being nominated before.

Who will fill the vacuum?

What's next for awards of these types? I firmly believe that somebody will step in to fill the vacuum quite soon and announce a new awards ceremony, or maybe even somebody may purchase the brand of Global Poker Awards. The GPAs were, after all, formed out of the ashes of the European Poker Awards.

I'd say the front-runners were Poker.Org and GGPoker, but I'd also throw the hats of the WPT Club Gold and PokerNews into the ring, maybe even Triton as a long shot. It's probably necessary for an operator with deep pockets to be involved, given the cost and difficulty to monetise, but I would hope a media operator would call the shots over a poker room.

I'm sure that the folks at the Global Poker Awards had already looked into these avenues previously, but my big prediction for 2026 is that some brave, naive fools will convince themselves that a poker awards will be easy and take on the challenge.