WSOP Main Event confirmed as fourth-largest World Championship in history

The WSOP Main Event saw players such as Phil Ivey and Liv Boeree both register late and bust as legends of the game battled to make Day 3, but how do this year’s figures compare to the 2025 World Championship?

This year’s WSOP Main Event was always going to come down to the numbers. For months, a Polymarket betting spread has been set at whether the World Championship would welcome over 10,000 entries or not. Many came down on the under of that proposition and they were proven correct after Day 2d of this year’s Main Event.

With two days of late registration on Day 2abc the day before yesterday and Day 2d last night, hopes were still high of a big number in the Main Event and that’s exactly what it got. While the total field of 9,208 falls short of the field in 2023, 2024 and 2025, it still ranks as the fourth-largest WSOP Main Event in history, with only the 2006 WSOP Main Event won by Jamie Gold ahead of it among all other years on record.

The top prize was confirmed as once again being $10,000,000, the same as it was when Michael Mizrachi won the 2025 iteration 12 months ago, as well as matching the prize won by Jonathan Tamayo in 2024 when that record-setting field of 10,112 entries was posted. With 1,382 places paid, this year’s players will be hoping they can reach the fabled nine-handed final table, which this year will break for almost three weeks before playing down to a winner between August 3-5 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Here are the top five WSOP Main Event fields of all-time with all of the past four championships present on the list.

Breaking down the numbers - where did 2026 fall short?

While the 9,208 entries in this year’s WSOP Main Event are huge numbers, they fell over 500 short of the total from 2025. With the impact on taxation from Donald Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ blamed for some of that shortfall, where did the biggest change occur? Well, the opening day of this year’s Main Event was considerably lower than in 2025. A year ago, 923 entries on opening day got everyone talking about the potential of the record being beaten. That momentum helped gather in the third-largest field ever recorded, while this week, only 772 players took on Day 1a, including the 1989 world champion Phil Hellmuth, who entered dressed as Superman and remains in contention for the title.

Day 1b’s total in 2025 was 1,096, with this year slightly behind on 1,038. The same slightly lower count applied to Day 1c, where 1,573 players this year compared pretty well to the 1,648 who played the corresponding day in 2025. Day 1d is always by far the biggest day and that trend continued this year, with 4,694 players deciding to leave their registration until the last starting flight. In 2025, that was higher by 303 entries, the biggest differential.

While Day 1 players were down, Day 2 registrations were slightly higher in 2026, with 265 players entering on Day 2abc in 2025 but 312 taking their shot on this year’s Day 2abc. The same could be said for last night’s Day 2d, where 820 entries outstripped the 776 players who left it to the last minute in 2025.

It might be a numbers game, but whoever becomes this year’s world champion will win exactly what Michael Mizrachi did in 2025... apart from possible different tax laws, but that’s another deal entirely. Here are all the days and flights of 2025 and how they compare to this year’s Main Event entries.