On May 3rd, the GGPoker World Festival opened its doors and immediately broke a world record. At peak, 900,000 players were logged in simultaneously — more than any online poker platform has ever recorded. The Guinness World Record certification was already in the pipeline. What followed was five weeks of the biggest guaranteed prize pools in online poker history.

The series runs until June 9th. There are still two weeks left. If you haven’t looked at it yet, now is the time.

What is the GG World Festival?

The GG World Festival is GGPoker‘s flagship annual online series — the equivalent of what the WSOP Main Event week is to live poker, except stretched across five weeks and open to anyone from a $3 buy-in upward. The 2026 edition is the largest in its history, with $300 million in total guaranteed prize money across 1,600 individual tournaments.

The structure is built around four tiers, each designed for a different player level. Everyone plays the same festival — the only difference is which rung you’re on.

The four tiers explained

The Low tier runs from $3 to $25 buy-ins, with 400 events averaging $30,000 guaranteed each and a $300,000 tier leaderboard. This is where recreational players and micro-stakes grinders find a genuine festival experience without significant financial risk.

The Medium tier covers $26 to $150 buy-ins, with 400 events averaging $150,000 guaranteed and a $700,000 leaderboard. The $55 World Festival Classic offered a $2,026,000 guaranteed prize pool — one of the most value-rich tournaments at this price point anywhere in online poker.

The High tier spans $151 to $1,050, with 400 events averaging $200,000 guaranteed and a $1,000,000 leaderboard. The standout event was the $525 World Bounty Festival with a $10,000,000 guarantee.

The Super tier starts at $1,051 and runs to the top. The anchor event is the $10,000 GGMillion$ Main Event with a $10,000,000 guarantee, which played out on May 25th. The $1,500 GG World Championship — still upcoming on June 1st — carries another $10,000,000 guarantee.

What’s still left to play

The series finale runs May 31st through June 9th. Key remaining events include:

• May 31: ¥1,500 Zodiac Asia Championship (Bounty) — ¥10,000,000 GTD
• June 1: $1,500 GG World Championship — $10,000,000 GTD
• June 7-8: Festival Closer events across all four tiers
• June 8: $150 GGWF Mystery Closer — $5,000,000 GTD

The $3M leaderboard is still live across all tiers — Low ($300K), Medium ($700K), High ($1M), Super ($1M). Leaderboard points accumulate based on prize pool size and finishing position, which means the closing events carry outsized weight for players who have been grinding the series.

Why Asian players specifically should be paying attention

The festival schedule is designed with Asian time zones in mind. The Sunday flagship events kick off at 12:30 UTC — which is 7:30 PM Bangkok/Hanoi, 8:30 PM Manila/Kuala Lumpur, and 9:30 PM Seoul/Tokyo. The weekday Phase Finals run at 18:30 UTC, which lands at 1:30 AM for most of Southeast Asia — tough for some, but manageable for serious players.

The Zodiac-branded events are specifically designed for Asian players, with CNY buy-ins (¥25, ¥215, ¥1,500) and prize pools denominated in yuan. The Sunday Showdown Asia Mystery Bounty event, which opened the series on May 3rd, drew one of the largest fields of the opening weekend.

How to satellite in for the remaining big events

GGPoker runs step satellites for every major event, starting from as little as $1. A typical path into a $1,500 championship event runs through three or four satellite tiers, with the total outlay possible for under $50 if you run well early. Flash Satellites — fast-structure, single-table qualifiers — fire every few hours and offer the quickest route to a seat.

With the GG World Championship still a week away, the satellite structure for it will be running at full capacity through May 31st.

The record that puts this in context

The 900,000 concurrent player record on May 3rd was not a marketing figure — it was a verified Guinness World Record attempt, with independent verification. For context, that number is roughly equal to the entire peak traffic of PokerStars at its 2010 height, achieved in a single day on a platform that didn’t exist fifteen years ago.

The GG World Festival has two weeks left. The biggest remaining prize pools are still ahead of it.