Ireland has long held a privileged position on Europe’s poker map, thanks to its rich cultural fabric, friendly atmosphere, and a series of accessible yet prestigious tournaments that attract recreational hopefuls and elite professionals alike. Leading into 2025 and 2026, Ireland is going to be home to an even more ambitious poker schedule; it is poised to deliver landmark events with evolving festival formats.
The Irish Poker Open sets the mood.
No event encapsulates the essence of Irish card culture better than the Irish Poker Open. Regarded as Europe’s longest-running No-Limit Hold’em tournament, this premier event is back in 2025 with a Main Event carrying a guarantee of €2.5 million – marking it as the biggest ever in Ireland’s history. The venue at Royal Dublin Society (RDS) sees what has evolved into a poker festival mixing heritage and mass appeal with everything from satellites starting at €140 to high rollers running up to €10,000 buy-in.
For many, the Irish Poker Open is a community event more than anything else. In that room, poker becomes the language shared across generations and international borders by competitors and comrades alike. The growing integration of online poker platforms continues to connect the global poker community with the Dublin festivities. The RDS will be back playing host to the event come 2026, with an even larger lineup teased by organizers as ‘the biggest poker event ever held in Ireland.’ If 2025 writes a brave new chapter, believe 2026 is ready to take it one step further.
A new vibe at Dublin’s Poker Festival
It offers what the Irish Poker Open doesn’t, greater value for the recreational player. Running Feb 18–Mar 1, 2026 at the Bonnington Hotel, Dublin, Ireland hosts staples including the European Deepstack and the Amateur Championship of Poker (ACOP), which have managed to wriggle themselves solidly into the local poker calendar. What sets this festival apart is content. There’s a slow, almost pensive way hands develop here. Maybe it’s the deep stacks, maybe it’s the eclectic mix of people who share them. One way or another, the Dublin Poker Festival offers room for deliberate play and meaningful moments—not something we see very often in the modern, quick-fire tournament circuit.
Going around the country with the Irish Poker Tour
Poker is not a city-centered phenomenon anywhere outside of Dublin. The Irish Poker Tour more resembles an annual party on the move, taking games to all parts of the country. In Limerick, Cork, Galway, and Killarney, each stop adds local flavor to the competition experience. Structures change, venues shift, but the community feeling always remains.
One highlight for 2026 will be the Irish Poker Tour Final at Dublin’s Green Isle Hotel, where a €300,000+ guarantee headlines the opening event of the New Year. These festivals often carry what most describe as a festival-like vibe, food trucks outside, music inside, laughter in the air, they’re as much social gatherings as sporting contests.
Regional favorites with distinct personalities
It’s not just big events that create a strong poker scene for Ireland but also lesser-knowns like the Mayo Poker Tour or the Munster Poker Festival. What makes them interesting is not only about prize pools or structures but authenticity itself. You could be sitting next to a local legend, perhaps only a tourist passing through town for one night, or maybe one just giving poker a shot for their very first time. A smaller show, like the one here allows for uncanny-to-lost connections that larger continuous series often voids. Touch, talk long by hands-these the kind people search for here and find companionship that more e5sently lacks with the rest of European poker circuit’s deals.
It’s not just “growing” but “evolving” and the trend of the day is: it’s not so much about the quantity and size of guarantees anyway. It’s about embracing the kind of variety one can experience. it might be prestige and scale of the Irish Poker Open, though in consideration poker play at Dublin Poker Festival, or the regional Irish Poker Tour – every type of player will find something for themselves.
And if we’d thread everything on a cultural loom, what we’d get in the end would be value in narration, companionship, and compared to competition, traditions and activities. Ireland, therefore, has not just hosted tournaments but hosted never to forget ‘one’ moments rather than continuous poker tournaments.