There are poker festivals, there are big poker festivals and then there is Killarney.

For one week in Autumn of 2025, players from Ireland and much further afield descended on the Gleneagle Hotel for what has become the jewel in the crown of the Irish Poker Tour.

By the time the last card was dealt, 3,100 entries had been recorded across the festival and an incredible €1,122,010 had been paid out in prize money.

Not bad for a few days away.

The Gleneagle has welcomed everyone from Joe Dolan and Status Quo to Morrissey and The Wolfe Tones, but for one week the entertainment came from a very different collection of characters.

The poker players were in town.

Familiar faces including Andy Black, Dara O’Kearney, Paul Carr, Mary Galvin and Shane Keary mixed with players arriving from across Europe and beyond, and there were trophies everywhere you looked.

 

Hugh Diver took down the Wednesday NLH for €6,100, while Andrew Lukas Allain won the Mystery Bounty, which attracted 193 entries and built a prize pool of €84,920.

The Omaha Championship was another big one, with Mark Buckley taking home the trophy and €24,000. Elsewhere Jamie Kelly won the €1K One Dayer, Caroline McKeever lifted the Women’s Championship trophy and June Jenkins produced one of the stories of the festival by taking down the Killarney 300.

There was plenty happening away from the tables too.

The Women’s Championship worked alongside Hearts of Queens, helping raise €1,320 for several causes including Safe Ireland and the Aoibhneas Domestic Abuse Network.

Poker was not the only place where reputations were on the line either.

The Killarney Pool Competition gave players another chance to prove themselves, only this time with a cue in hand. What started as a bit of fun quickly became as serious as you would expect when you put poker players in front of anything containing a winner, a loser and bragging rights.

That is part of what makes Killarney what it is. You can bust a tournament, grab a pint, pick up a pool cue and suddenly find yourself fighting for another title entirely.

Then there was the Main Event.

This was the one everybody wanted.

A €700 buy in, a €500,000 guarantee and ultimately 899 entries created a prize pool of €535,085.

After flight after flight, 168 players returned for Day 2 with 90 places paid.

Then came the bubble.

Short stacks suddenly discovered they could take several minutes to look at two cards, while everyone else wandered around pretending not to care what was happening on the other tables.

Eventually somebody had to go.

That somebody was Gerard Ward.

His A♠K♠ ran into Charlotte Waters’ J♥10♥, with Waters flopping a straight and sending “Sugar” to the rail in 91st.

For everyone else, relief.

By the end of Day 2 just 23 players remained, with Ed Fogarty holding a monster stack of 5,900,000.

Sunday arrived and the Gleneagle Arena had a different feel about it.

Only 23 players remained and there was the small matter of €100,000 waiting for one of them.

As the field thinned, the final table took centre stage.

John Ward eventually finished 3rd for €45,000, before Tommy O’Rourke took runner up spot and €63,500.

That left one man standing.

Finland’s Samuel Petteri Saariaho had arrived in Killarney as a professional poker player with a WSOP Omaha ring already on his résumé.

He left as the 2025 Killarney Main Event Champion.

Surrounded by his rail, Saariaho lifted the trophy and collected the €100,000 top prize.

 

€1,122,010 in prize money.

899 Main Event entries.

And one Finnish champion leaving Killarney €100,000 richer.

Big numbers, but anyone who has been to Killarney knows that is only part of it.

It is the packed arena, the noise from the rail, the bad beat stories in the bar, the familiar faces turning up through the doors and the people who planned to stay for two days somehow still sitting there nearly a week later.

For a few days the whole place becomes its own world.

That is what makes The Killarney Poker Festival different.

When you ask?

Tuesday, October 13, 2026 – Sunday, October 18, 2026 – Killarney 2026