Through September 20, Red Dragon Poker’s 2026 online season has produced 75 events and 505 tournaments. This guide turns the fixed schedule, buy-in spread and satellite paths into a practical plan for the rest of the year.
Make these three choices first
- Block the fixed slotsTuesday 388, Saturday 518, Sunday 10:00–23:30.
- Lower your entry costA 55 Dragon Coin satellite can win a 518 Main Event seat—a 1:9.4 cost ratio.
- Move up in stakesOnline currently tops out at 888; look to Jeju from Oct 28 for more.
Season at a glance: event density is up nearly 6×
The biggest change this year is not the size of any single guarantee — it is how often events run. January had 3. August had 17. That is close to a six-fold increase in nine months, and September is not finished yet.
Jan 3 → Feb 6 → Mar 5 → Apr 3 → May 6 → Jun 9 → Jul 11 → Aug 17 → Sep 15 (through 9/20, month still running)
Seven series have now run 40 editions, 53% of all events — more than half the calendar is predictable. You can plan around it instead of waiting for announcements.
Of 505 tournaments, 86 are satellites or qualifiers — roughly 17%.
Taken together, these numbers show Red Dragon has shifted from one-off campaigns to a predictable fixed rhythm. For players that matters more than any single guarantee, because a rhythm can be planned around and a guarantee cannot.
Fixed schedule: save Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday
If you take one thing from this article, take this table. It is the pattern distilled from 40 recurring editions run so far in 2026:
| Series | Fixed rhythm | Main buy-in | Guarantee | Editions in 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Red Dragon Weekly | Starts Saturday, 2-day event | 518 | 800K | 7 |
| Red Dragon Midweek | Starts Tuesday, 2-day event | 388 | 500K | 8 |
| Peak Monthly | Once a month, starts Saturday | 888 | 1.5M | 4 |
| Rising Star Series | 5 events daily + Saturday Challenge | 22–68.8 | 150K | 11 |
| Championship Series | One festival per season, 7–8 days | 888 | 10M | 4 |
| RDPT PLUS Sync Celebration | Runs alongside the live festivals | 1–1,600 | 15M | 6 |
| Weekend Specials | Every Sunday 10:00–23:30 | 10% off reg. | 12 tournaments | Ongoing |
Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday are the most stable structure of the whole season — none of them has moved once this year. Block those three slots first, then fill in around the series festivals. That is the least-effort way to build a schedule.
Choose by budget: 1 to 888 Dragon Coins
The Championship Series buy-in ladder
Something the first half did not have showed up on August 31. Autumn Championship Series S1 ran for eight days (8/31–9/7) with a 10,000,000 Dragon total guarantee — but the number to look at is not the guarantee, it is the structure: seven events chained into a ladder that runs from 1 Dragon all the way to 888.
| Buy-in | Event | Dates | Guarantee & extras |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Invitational | 8/31 | 500 tickets released |
| 88 | Mini Main | 9/5–9/6 | 300K GTD · staged qualifying locks the money |
| 110 | Mystery Bounty Million | 9/2–9/7 | 1M GTD · top chest at least 88,888 |
| 218 | Bounty Opener | 9/1 | 200K GTD · mystery chest bonus 5,000 |
| 218 | Closing Event | 9/7 | 250K GTD · top chest bonus 6,888 |
| 518 | Azure Dragon Cup | 9/2–9/3 | 1M GTD · five Day 1 flights + Last Chance |
| 888 | Main Event | 9/4–9/6 | 2M GTD · champion bracelet |
What the template means in practice: inside one festival, the 1 Dragon player and the 888 player are chasing the same trophy story, and every rung in between has an on-ramp. Summer S1–S3 ran this three times; Autumn S1 made it complete. This is very likely what every season looks like from here.
The real spread of 428 buy-ins
Across 428 recorded buy-ins this year, the median is 218 Dragon. Here is the spread:
| Buy-in band | Tournaments | Share | Mostly from |
|---|---|---|---|
| ≤ 120 Dragon | 198 | 46% | Rising Star, satellites, Mini Mains |
| 121–400 Dragon | 71 | 17% | Midweek 388, bounty events 218 |
| 401–888 Dragon | 144 | 34% | Weekly 518, Azure Dragon 518, Mains 888 |
| > 888 Dragon | 15 | 4% | Sync Celebration high buy-ins (cap 1,600) |
Push｜888
Almost half of all tournaments sit in this band. Start with the Rising Star 22／33／55, get comfortable with the format, then use satellites to convert into a 518 Main seat — the full conversion table is in the next section.
2. The fixed-rhythm route (buy-in 300–600)
Tuesday 388 Midweek + Saturday 518 Weekly — two events a week, two days each, is the most stable combination of the year. Neither series has moved its start day across 15 editions, which makes it a solid long-term training rhythm.
3. The high-stakes route (buy-in 888)
Peak Monthly 888 and the Championship Main 888. Worth noting: across the 194 tournaments run since August 1, not one had a buy-in above 888 — 888 is the current online ceiling. For anything higher you have to wait for a live festival.
Satellite paths: starting from 45 Dragon Coins
Of 505 tournaments, 86 are satellites or qualifiers. The Weekly and Midweek satellite matrices are identical every edition, so the cost ratio can be worked out exactly:
| Target Main | Satellite | Buy-in | Seats GTD | Cost ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 518 Red Dragon Weekly | Super Satellite 17:30 | 98 | 15 | 1 : 5.3 |
| Satellite, hourly 11:05–18:05 | 55 | 5 | 1 : 9.4 | |
| Hyper Satellite, rolling 11:00–19:30 | 70 | 2 | 1 : 7.4 | |
| 388 Red Dragon Midweek | Super Satellite 17:30 | 72 | 15 | 1 : 5.4 |
| Satellite, hourly 12:05–18:05 | 45 | 5 | 1 : 8.6 | |
| Hyper Satellite, rolling 12:00–19:30 | 55 | 2 | 1 : 7.1 |
Turning a 55 Dragon satellite into a 518 Main seat means sitting at the same table for under a tenth of the cost. The hourly line guarantees 5 seats and runs more often than any other — the best value route of the season, and the one most often overlooked.
The live season: Jeju is next, and results beat the guarantee
Next｜JPF 2026 Jeju, Oct 28–Nov 11
The next live stop is locked in. JPF 2026 RDPT × KPC runs October 28 to November 11 at LES A Casino, Jeju, South Korea — 15 days, 178 scheduled tournaments, with three Main Events guaranteeing a combined KRW 3.88 billion:
| Main Event | Buy-in (KRW) | Guarantee (KRW) |
|---|---|---|
| KPC Main Event | 1,300,000 | 880 million |
| Red Dragon Classic Main Event | 2,500,000 | 1.2 billion |
| Red Dragon Plus Championship | 4,000,000 | 1.8 billion |
For online players the question is not whether you fly to Jeju. It is this: for the last two live festivals, an online Sync Celebration ran alongside. Start watching for online qualifying routes from mid-October — that is the pattern the past year has repeated.
Last festival｜Prize pool beat the guarantee by 14%
After a festival ends, the actual figures published by the poker media are worth more than any pre-event guarantee, because they are what really happened. Take the July stop:
Vietnam's Khanh Duy Ta won it from a 597-entry field. The final prize pool reached KRW 2.063 billion (about USD 1.39M), beating the KRW 1.8 billion guarantee. First place took KRW 349.7M (about USD 232K) and the gold dragon bracelet; runner-up Haidi Feng of China took KRW 298.2M.
92 tournaments, 4,448 entries, total prize pool around USD 5.8M.
Note the last line: the real pool came in 14% above the guarantee. That is exactly why a guarantee should be read as a floor — and the October Jeju Main carries the same KRW 1.8 billion figure.
Growth｜About 5× in two years
A single edition tells you nothing. Put it on a timeline and the direction shows:
- 2024: 3 tournaments, roughly USD 2.9M in prize pools
- Full year 2025: 154 tournaments/flights, 6,919 entries, roughly USD 9M
- Spring 2026 (4/10–21): 73 tournaments, 6,410 entries, about USD 9M
- Summer 2026 (7/8–19): 92 tournaments, 4,448 entries, about USD 5.8M
- Autumn 2026 (10/28–11/11): 15 days, 178 scheduled tournaments, three Mains guaranteeing KRW 3.88B combined
The two live festivals in the first half of 2026 alone already total 1.6× the prize money of all of 2025. That also explains why online density climbed from 3 events in January to 17 in August — online and live are the same growth curve, not two separate things.
Worth remembering: the "Red Dragon" name started as the Main Event of the Macau Poker Cup, once holding the record for Asia's largest freezeout, and only became a standalone tour brand in 2024. In the two years since, the annual prize pool has grown roughly five-fold.
Bottom line: save three fixed slots
Tuesday’s 388 Midweek, Saturday’s 518 Weekly and Sunday’s 10:00–23:30 Weekend Special are the backbone of the year-end schedule. Add Championship Series and Jeju dates around them.
Data in this article comes from Red Dragon Poker official event records, covering January 1 to September 20, 2026, and will be updated as the season progresses. See what is running now →
Sources and counting method
Online event, schedule and buy-in data come from Red Dragon Poker official event records (period 2026/1/1–9/20). "Events" means each entry in the official promotions list; "tournaments" means the rows in each event's schedule table; "satellites/qualifiers" counts tournaments whose name contains "satellite" or "qualifier"; the buy-in statistics include only tournaments with a numeric buy-in, excluding freerolls and Finals with no additional buy-in. This revision recounted the whole year under one consistent method, so some figures differ from the July version. Live results, festival scale and historical figures are cited from SomuchPoker and Spade Poker (reported July 19, 2026). Live tournament counts follow the figures recorded by the media, which use a different basis from the flight rows in the official schedule.