The 2024 World Snooker Championship takes place across April and May, so check out our all you need to know guide as Luca Brecel bids to defend his crown at the iconic Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.
The Sheffield showpiece gets underway on Saturday 20th April, with defending champion Luca Brecel opening the action against Dave Gilbert at 10:00 BST, with the match playing to a conclusion on the same evening.
The tournament runs until Monday 6th May in what is a thrilling 17 days of battles on the baize.
The top 16 players on the two year ranking list automatically secured qualification through to the World Snooker Championship, and have been joined by 16 qualifiers.
Top Half (Table One):
(1) Luca Brecel v Dave Gilbert
(16) Robert Milkins v Pang Junxu
(9) Ali Carter v Stephen Maguire
(8) Shaun Murphy v Lyu Haotian
(5) Mark Selby v Joe O'Connor
(12) Kyren Wilson v Dominic Dale
(13) John Higgins v Jamie Jones
(4) Mark Allen v Robbie Williams
Bottom Half (Table Two):
(3) Judd Trump v Hossein Vafaei
(14) Tom Ford v Ricky Walden
(11) Zhang Anda v Jak Jones
(6) Mark Williams v Si Jiahui
(7) Ding Junhui v Jack Lisowski
(10) Gary Wilson v Stuart Bingham
(15) Barry Hawkins v Ryan Day
(2) Ronnie O'Sullivan v Jackson Page
Read: World Snooker Championship: First round draw & schedule
The World Snooker Championship is held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, with the fabled venue now synonymous with the WST's showpiece event.
Qualifying matches took place at the English Institute of Sport, a few miles away from the Crucible in Sheffield.
All matches from the 2024 World Snooker Championship will be streamed live at bet365, whilst the BBC and Eurosport will also be providing live coverage of every game throughout the competition.
Snooker fans aren’t given much of a taste of long-format matches these days, with the majority of the tour played over the first-to-seven or first-to-nine distance, and this tournament does pose different challenges.
No player can be sure to play well in every session of the event and it's often about minimising the damage when things aren't going quite as planned.
First-round matches are the best-of-19-frames contests, second-round and quarter-finals contests are the best-of-25, semi-finals move up to best-of-33, and the final, played over two days, is a best-of-35 marathon.
(Odds will display when available)
Luca Brecel won his maiden world title in 2023 after a thrilling 18-15 triumph over four-time winner Mark Selby.
The Belgian Bullet saw off Ricky Walden, Mark Williams, Ronnie O'Sullivan and Si Jiahui en-route to the final, before holding his nerve to see of the spirited Jester from Leicester, who had pegged Brecel back to 16-15 having previously trailed 16-10.
The event moved to the Steel City venue in 1977, having been previously staged at various venues around the United Kingdom, and has been played at the Crucible ever since.
The Ladies World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible between 1998 and 2003 but was eventually withdrawn due to financial difficulties.
The prize money for the 2024 World Snooker Championship will remain unchanged from 2023 with the winner set to receive a bumper £500,000 with the runner-up being handed £200,000.
The beaten semi-finalists in Sheffield will each receive £100,000 and the losers in the quarter-finals £50,000.
The players who were beaten in the last 16 will pocket £30,000 each and the first-round losers £20,000.
Joe Davis won 15 World Championship titles between 1927 and 1946 while Fred Davis (1948-56) and John Pulman (1957-68) both won eight world titles.
The 'modern' era of snooker is considered to have started in 1969 though and Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan have both been world champions on seven occasions.
Steve Davis and Ray Reardon both won the tournament on six occasions while John Higgins and mark Selby have secured the trophy four times.
Williams and John Spencer have three world titles to their name while the only other players to have won the tournament more than once are Walter Donaldson, in 1947 and 1950, and Alex Higgins (1972 and 1982).