Winamax Poker Tour Grande Finale Chases Record Field as France’s Grassroots Pipeline Delivers Again
Every March, thousands of French poker players converge on Aix-en-Provence for the Winamax Poker Tour (WiPT) Grande Finale. Most of them paid €500 to be there. A significant number paid nothing at all.
With 3,163 entries already logged across six Day 1 flights at the Pasino Grand Partouche, the 2026 edition is tracking to surpass last year’s record field of 3,503.
But the entry count is almost beside the point — what’s more interesting about this tournament is where those entries came from.
France’s Biggest Grassroots Poker Circuit
The Winamax Poker Tour is the biggest free-to-enter live poker circuit in France. Its model is straightforward: give recreational players a realistic, low-cost path to a national final, then get out of the way.
Every season, Winamax runs a series of regional freeroll stops across the country. Players who advance earn their €500 seat to the Grande Finale at zero cost. This season covered ten live stages between October 2025 and February 2026.
Those ten stops drew 9,583 participants in total. Eight of them attracted more than 800 players each — a consistency that’s hard to achieve for a paid event, let alone a free one.
Online, the numbers are even more striking. A total of 266,063 qualification attempts were recorded across Winamax’s satellite and Expresso routes this season alone. At the end of that pipeline, 190 players earned a €500 Main Event seat without spending a cent.
The 2026 Main Event: A Record in Reach
La Finale runs across seven Day 1 flights, with Day 1g scheduled for 8 p.m. local time tonight. The 2025 record of 3,503 entries is the field to beat; whether tonight’s turnout gets there remains to be seen.
Here’s where the field stands ahead of the final flight, based on live chip counts from the tournament floor:
Thibaut Garcia leads the overall field with 1,174,000 chips, the only player across any completed flight to clear the million-chip mark. Winamax Team Pro Bruno Lopes sits fourth with 873,000.
Lithuania’s Titas Gancierius is the sole non-French name in the top ten — a reminder of just how French this tournament is.
How to Reach a National Final for Free
Patrice Espinasse didn’t pay a cent to reach the 2025 Grande Finale final table. He’d qualified through a freeroll, made the trip to Aix-en-Provence, and ran deep enough to face Yoann Kaminisky heads-up for the title.
Kaminisky won, taking home €175,000. Espinasse collected €127,500 as runner-up, all of it profit .
That’s the WiPT in a sentence. Reaching a live national final here doesn’t require a significant buy-in or a backing deal — just a strong showing at a regional freeroll. The 190 players who qualified that way this season proved the door is genuinely open.
Several of them will be bagging chips when Day 1g wraps tonight.
A Festival That Keeps Growing
Two years ago, Winamax made a call that looked like a risk — pulling the Grande Finale out of Paris after 14 years and relocating it to Aix-en-Provence. It paid off immediately. The 2025 edition set an entry record. The 2026 edition is on course to break it.
The WiPT isn’t growing because it raised buy-ins or chased a wealthier player pool. It’s growing because it kept the door open — and most live poker growth stories in 2026 don’t look anything like that.
Day 2 is Saturday, March 28. The final table is on Monday, March 30, where one player will be handed the WiPT sword and crowned Champion de France de poker. Given how most of them got here, that title will mean all the more.
Image: Courtesy of winamax.fr