by Ben Hudd • December 19, 2022

The 2023 World Pool Championship will take place in Kielce, Poland as the Targi Kielce Exhibition and Congress Centre plays host to one of the most prestigious tournaments on the nineball pool calendar.

Professional pool returns to the Polish city of Kielce a decade on from the 2012 World Pool Masters, which produced an all-Polish final as Karol Skowerski defeated countryman Mateusz Sniegocki.

The $325,000 tournament will be the opening Matchroom tournament on the 2023 calendar, with Shane van Boening heading to Poland to defend his crown after beating Albin Ouschan in this year’s final in Milton Keynes, England.

The top 100 players in the nineball world rankings will automatically qualify for the lucrative blue-ribbon event, as world number seven Wiktor Zielinski, Konrad Juszczyszyn and Mieszko Fortunski compete on home soil as top 16 seeds.

Matchroom’s Emily Frazer said: “We’re so excited to take the World Pool Championship to Poland, a place that is a hotbed for nineball. I am looking forward to welcoming the world’s best to Kielce for what promises to be another breathtaking week of action.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Polish Billiard Association and partners for all their hard work already to bring the event to a new country. I believe the production will be the best to date for a multi-table event with exciting plans to extend our coverage further.”

Main table coverage will be shown live on Sky Sports in the UK and Ireland, DAZN in the USA, Canada, Spain and Italy as well as other international broadcasters, while two further tables will be streamed on the Matchroom YouTube channels.