European Disability Snooker Championship 2025 | Tournament Preview
The second staging of the European Disability Snooker Championship takes place at the Grand Blue Fafa Resort in Golem, Albania on 14-19 October.
- Tournament List (select classification group and click ‘Groups’ for draw)
- Match schedule (all events)
Cueists from 12 nations will be represented at the event, which is staged alongside the 2025 European Billiards & Snooker Association (EBSA) European Championships, and will feature tournaments across six classification groups.
Group 1-2
Six players from two countries will contest the wheelchair classification group as world number one Dave Beaumont aims to defend the title he won in Portugal 12 months ago.
Beaumont defeated fellow countryman Tony Southern in the deciding frame of last year’s final and Southern will be aiming to go one step further at the Grand Blue Fafa Resort.
Reigning Group 1 world champion Gary Swift will be looking to add the European crown to his impressive CV while Matthew Lester and Nathan Williams make up the rest of the English contingent in Group 1-2.
American cueist Andrew Blood completes the line-up as he competes in his third WDBS ranking event and will be looking to improve on a maiden knockout stages run at the 2025 Hull Open.
Group 3
Hong Kong China’s Andy Lam arrives in Albania aiming to defend the European Disability Snooker Championship title.
Lam defeated Nigel Coton, who is absent from this year’s event, 3-1 in the 2024 final and will be looking to add a third WDBS ranking event crown to his trophy cabinet.
He is joined by Group 3’s world number one Kal Mattu, who fell at the semi-final stages 12 months ago, and Peter Hull – who lifted his maiden ranking event title at the 2025 Belgian Open.
Group 4
A strong Group 4 classification group features reigning World and European champion Carl Gibson and World Snooker Tour (WST) Hall of Fame inductee Daniel Blunn among an eight-player line-up.
Gibson defeated Blunn 3-0 in last year’s European Championship final and arrives in Albania looking to win the 13th WDBS title of his career.
Six of the top seven ranked players feature in the tournament as five-time event winner David Church is joined by the English trio of Nigel Brasier, Andy Johnson and Steve Cartwright.
The line-up is completed by Ireland’s Alex Hennebry and Belgium’s Yannick Piscador.
Group 5
Dave Bolton arrives in Albania as the favourite for the title in Group 5 as he looks to defend the crown he won in Portugal twelve months ago.
The runaway world number one whitewashed Dalton Lawrence, who competes once more in Albania, in the title match and is aiming for a 14th WDBS title victory.
Pakistan’s Shahzad Butt is competing at his first WDBS event since making his debut at the 2025 World Championship, where he defeated Bolton in the group stages en route to reaching the semi-finals.
In a global group, former ranking event finalist Brynjar Valdimarsson from Iceland is joined by Australia’s Jodie Wikeepa and France’s Jose Moreno Lopez.
Group 6
The Group 6 classification is guaranteed a new European champion with world number two Leroy Williams and reigning UK champion Reece Matin among the favourites for the title in Albania.
Matthew Haslam, the world number one and reigning European champion, is absent from this year’s event making 14-time WDBS event winner Williams the top seed at the Grand Blue Fafa Resort.
Matin, aged 22, burst onto the WDBS scene by winning the UK Disability Snooker Championship on debut last month at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds – just weeks after lifting the EPSB English Disability Snooker Championship crown at the same venue.
Top ten ranked players James Hart, a former British Open champion, and Oliver Hanson are joined by compatriot James Lodge and Rob Diparno in a line-up that also features Danish debutant Nicklas Olsen.
Group 7+8
The combined visual and deaf classification group features six players from three nations competing for glory at the Grand Blue Fafa Resort.
Last year’s champion Luke Drennan is absent meaning a new champion is guaranteed to be crowned with former Group 8 world number ones Gary Taylor and Lewis Knowles among the favourites.
Taylor has made a strong start to the campaign by lifting the title at last month’s UK Disability Snooker Championship and reached the semi-final stage in Albufeira last year, as did 82-year-old Ronnie Allen who once again represents Wales on the global stage.
Fellow Welshman Jonathan Steggles features in a line-up which is completed by England’s Matthew Stera, who is competing in his second WDBS event.
The European Disability Snooker Championship takes place on 14-19 October at the Grand Blue Fafa Resort and you can follow the action via WPBSA SnookerScores.
