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Irish Open Afterparty Brings $3M in Guarantees to PokerStars Tables This Weekend

Written by: Liam Carter

•

April 10, 2026

Irish Open Afterparty Brings $3M in Guarantees to PokerStars Tables This Weekend

The 2026 Irish Open wrapped Monday in Dublin after breaking every attendance record it had set the year before. Among the 5,003 players in the €1,150 Main Event was Francesco Gisolfi — a café worker from Salerno who got his seat through a €10 PokerStars satellite and finished sixth for €105,070.

This Sunday, PokerStars brings the same format online, as the Irish Open Afterparty runs April 12–20 with 69 events, $3 million in guaranteed prize pools, and buy-ins from $5.50.

A Record-Breaking Live Festival Sets the Stage

The 46th Irish Poker Open produced numbers that were difficult to believe even as they were happening. Five starting flights at the Royal Dublin Society drew entries from 60 countries, with the €1,150 Main Event closing at 5,003 runners — a new record. The prize pool landed at €4,852,910, nearly double the €2.5 million guarantee.

For context: the 2025 Main Event drew 4,562 entries. The 2024 edition drew 3,233. The tournament has now broken its own attendance record three years running.

Bar chart showing the Irish Open Main Event entries by year from 2020 to 2026, rising from 2,955 entries to a record 5,003 in 2026.

Romania’s Narcis Nedelcu took the title, outlasting a final table that spanned six nationalities. The last five players struck an ICM deal with €70,227 set aside for the winner, which Nedelcu claimed after defeating Italy’s Danilo Donnini heads-up. Like Gisolfi, Nedelcu had also qualified through PokerStars.

2026 Irish Poker Open Final Table Results

PlacePlayerCountryPrize
1Narcis NedelcuRomania€ 336,790*
2Danilo DonniniItaly€ 257,660*
3Vasyl PalandiukUkraine€ 255,190*
4Daryl McAleenanIreland€ 250,500*
5Oliver GaykoGermany€ 285,380*
6Francesco GisolfiItaly€ 105,070
7Isaac BarkerUK€ 80,800
8Matthew TwomeyIreland€ 62,170
9Edward DunphyIreland€ 47,800
*denotes ICM deal

The Irish Open is the longest-running no-limit hold ’em tournament outside the World Series of Poker (WSOP); it was first held in Dublin in 1980. This edition may have been its biggest chapter yet — and not only because of the field size.

During the festival, organizers announced the event’s first-ever international expansion, with stops confirmed in Sydney, Marrakech, and the United States.

What the Irish Open Afterparty Offers Online Players

The Afterparty runs April 12–20 — 69 events, buy-ins from $5.50 to $530, over $3 million in combined guarantees. Satellites are already live in the PokerStars client from $0.55.

The lobby leans into the Irish theme: green, white, and orange color-coding, with event names pulled from folklore — the Paddy Stack, Four Leaf Clover, Blarney Bluff, Leprechaun. The headline is the $109 Celtic Fortune Main Event on April 19–20, carrying a $500,000 guarantee.

Opening day has its own draw. PokerStars ambassador Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg hosts two mystery bounty events on April 12 — the $11 Sunday Storm ($75,000 GTD) and the $75 Sunday Special ($400,000 GTD) — with a bounty on himself. Knock him out and you take home a $109 Celtic Fortune Main Event ticket.

Alongside standard No-Limit Hold’em there’s 8-Game, HORSE, 2-7 Triple Draw, PLO Hi/Lo, 5-Card Omaha, Zoom heads-up, turbos, hypers, and progressive knockouts. There’s enough range here that even players who find standard MTTs repetitive are likely to find a format worth trying.

What This Means for Players and the Broader Poker Calendar

The Afterparty’s timing feels deliberate. It opens six days after the live festival ended, while the Dublin buzz is still fresh — and before most players have found their next event to enter.

The Irish Open has built its reputation, in part, on satellite accessibility. In 2026, more than 1,600 Main Event entries came from players who won their seats online. The Afterparty extends that same logic to anyone who couldn’t make it to Dublin — and the mystery bounty format pushes it further, paying out on every knockout regardless of finishing position.

Gisolfi’s €10-to-€105,070 result is the most striking example, but it wasn’t a one-off. The Main Event winner himself qualified through PokerStars. At a $5.50 entry point, the gap between spectator and participant is about as narrow as it gets in tournament poker.

The series lands during a strong stretch for PokerStars across its live European calendar, with major festival stops already behind it and more ahead this spring. The Afterparty is a smaller series by dollar volume, but it’s one of the more accessible entry points into that world available this month.

The Irish Open Goes Global

During the live festival on April 3, organizers unveiled something that had never happened in 46 years of Irish Open history: international expansion. Three overseas stops are now confirmed, stretching from Sydney to Marrakech to an as-yet-unnamed US venue in 2027.

Sydney goes first. The Poker Palace will host a ten-day festival September 6–15, headlined by a $2,000 buy-in Main Event with a $1 million guarantee. Marrakech follows at the Casino de Marrakech, November 10–15, with a €1,150 Main Event and a €500,000 guarantee — the same buy-in as Dublin, which signals the organizers aren’t repositioning this as a high-roller circuit.

The first Day 1 remote flight for the Sydney Main Event was held in Dublin during the live festival itself. That pipeline — online qualification feeding directly into international live events — is already running, not just planned. It’s the same model that has driven player pool growth across regulated US markets and looks set to underpin the Irish Open’s next phase.

Co-owners Paul O’Reilly and JP McCann have pointed to the 50th edition in 2030 as a milestone they’re building toward. If three consecutive attendance records are any indication, they’re ahead of schedule.

How to Play the Irish Open Afterparty

Everything starts Sunday, April 12. To find satellites, open the PokerStars client, go to the Events tab, and select Irish Open from the upcoming events list — qualifiers are running around the clock from $0.55. The $109 Celtic Fortune Main Event runs April 19–20 with a $500,000 guarantee, and the full 69-event schedule is available on the PokerStars website.

The series closes April 20. For anyone who watched this week’s final table and has been wondering what a €10 investment can turn into, Sunday is a reasonable place to find out.

Image: Courtesy irishpokeropen.com