Second Q Tour Europe Event in Vienna Starts with Eight Austrians

The second ever Q Tour Europe event held in Vienna, organized by the WPBSA, also marks the second tournament of the 2025/26 season. A total of 117 athletes from 28 countries are taking part, including eight Austrians.

After the first session of the Last 128 round (4 p.m.), Patrick Stift (HSEBC Vienna) will kick off the action for the Austrian players at 6 p.m. with a match against Englishman Nigel Clark. Richard Alge (CSC Innsbruck) will also be in action on the first of the four match days, facing another English opponent, Sean O’Sullivan, in the final session of the day. In fact, in the opening round, seven out of the eight Austrian matchups are against players from England.

In the morning session of the second day of play at 10 a.m., Günter Kaschmitter (SCAH Heidenreichstein) enters the competition with a match against Dylan Smith. He is followed at 12 p.m. by Jérôme Liedtke (SNOCK Wieselburg), who will face Phil O’Kane.

In the penultimate session (2 p.m.) of the Last 128 round, Philipp Koch will take on Andrew Higginson. After that, three more Austrians are in action: the current leader of the Austrian Snooker League, Oskar Charlesworth (HSEBC Vienna), against Peter Devlin, the reigning Austrian U-21 champion, Lukas Stötzer (PSSC Wels), against Ashley Carty, and Thomas Janzso (HSEBC Vienna), who faces the only non-English first-round opponent of the Austrian players — Indian player Asutosh Padhy.

The tournament will then continue at 6 p.m. with the Last 64 round. In total, four of the eight first-round opponents of the Austrian players have previously competed as professionals on the World Snooker Tour.

All matches are played in a best-of-7 format. The winner earns a guaranteed spot at the WST UK Championship and secures a direct ticket to the Global Playoff, where — in addition to a spot for the ranking list winner — three more Main Tour tickets are up for grabs. It was through this route that Austria’s first professional snooker player, Florian Nüßle, qualified for the World Snooker Tour in March 2025 in Antalya.

While the event isn’t designed for large crowds in the traditional sense, interested snooker fans are welcome to drop by from Friday to Sunday starting at 10 a.m. at the National Snooker & Billiards Academy in Vienna, located at Hütteldorferstraße 150–154, to watch some of the best amateur players in the world in action. Admission is free.

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