EPC & UK Pinball Open 2026
The European Pinball Championship and the UK Open run 24 to 27 September 2026 at the Wandsworth Civic Suite in London.
Nick C
It’s a big week for UK pinball (with huge thanks to the London Pinball Republic team for pulling it all together). The European Pinball Championship (EPC), the UK Open, and the UK Open Classics all run across the same weekend at the Wandsworth Civic Suite in London, alongside the UK Open Ladies, Juniors, a team competition, and a Sunday Target Matchplay event for anyone who doesn’t make the cut elsewhere.
- Organiser website
- playpinball.uk
- Key dates
- Thursday 24 – Sunday 27 September 2026
- Venue
- Wandsworth Civic Suite 📍, London
- Tickets
- Ticket Tailor
- Matchplay
- EPC/UKO 2026 overview
The timetable
Every block below links through to that tournament’s page on matchplay.events, where qualifying and finals standings get posted live over the weekend.
Finals blocks aren’t clickable yet, links go live on matchplay.events once qualifying wraps each day; find them from the Matchplay link in the key info box above.
The field
227 players had registered ahead of this week, scraped from the official registration list and cross-referenced against each player’s live IFPA world ranking. 224 of the 227 hold a current rank, and world #1 Jason Zahler is in the field.
World ranking distribution
Top of the field
| Rank | Player | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jason Zahler | United States |
| 3 | Arvid Flygare | Sweden |
| 4 | Viggo Löwgren | Sweden |
| 6 | Eric Stone | United States |
| 7 | Timber Engelbeen | Belgium |
| 8 | Raymond Davidson | United States |
| 10 | Daniele Celestino Acciari | Italy |
| 13 | Jack Slovacek | United States |
| 17 | Carlos DeLaSerda | United States |
| 18 | Lukas Ott | Germany |
| 19 | Paul Englert | Germany |
| 20 | Nic Stein | United States |
Where the field is coming from
Snapshot taken 21 September 2026; registration was still open, so the final field will differ.
The tournaments
- European Pinball Championship (EPC): 5 game card qualifying, PAPA-style Matchplay finals (3 games per round) for the top 72 players. An IFPA Majors tournament.
- UK Open: 5 game card qualifying, PAPA-style Matchplay finals (3 games per round). Top 40 players go through to the A final, with the next 16 appropriate players making the B final. IFPA Certified+, and a Stern Pro Circuit event.
- UK Open Classics: 5 game card qualifying, top 32 through to PAPA-style Matchplay A finals (3 games per round). IFPA Certified+.
- UK Open Ladies: 5 game card qualifying, top 8 through to PAPA-style Matchplay A finals (3 games per round).
- UK Open Juniors: for players 14 and under, free entry for the Saturday afternoon event.
- UK Open Target Matchplay: a Sunday event on the UK Open Main bank for anyone who didn’t qualify elsewhere over the weekend.
Getting to the Wandsworth Civic Suite
The venue is central enough to combine with a London trip, but there’s no parking on site, so plan to arrive by train, tube, or bus:
- Nearest station: Wandsworth Town, about a 7 minute walk.
- Nearest tube: East Putney on the District line.
- Also handy: Clapham Junction is a short bus ride away, with Waterloo and Victoria both roughly 10 minutes from there by rail.
The Civic Suite itself sits in a well-connected part of Wandsworth, within easy reach of central London, with plenty of places to eat and stay nearby, including a Holiday Inn Express with a discount available for attendees, see the organiser’s location page for the booking link.
Nick from MAYA Pinball will be attending across the weekend, purely as a player, and to post updates from the event as it happens across social channels.
Can’t make it down? The event will be streamed on Backhand Pinball’s Twitch channel.
Miles to Wandsworth
Draw a straight line from every registered player’s hometown to the Wandsworth Civic Suite, double it for the trip home, and add it all up. These are the numbers. This is just a bit of fun under the assumption that everyone has up to date location information linked to their IFPA account.
Every route ends in SW18
Hover or tap a pin to see who it is. 159 players give a city and are pinned there. The other 68 only give a country or state, so they are pinned at its approximate population centre. Anyone landing on the same spot is fanned out roughly 10 miles apart.
How far is everyone going?
Average return trip 2,240 mi · median 980 mi
Tap a bar to light up those players on the map.
The Atlantic gap. Nobody's round trip is between 3,000 and 5,000 miles. Europe tops out at about 2,500, and the nearest North American is over 6,400.
The long haul. Almost everyone in the 5,000–15,000 mile group is from the US or Canada, plus two South Americans at the far end.
Down under. Three players are covering more than 20,000 miles: two Australians and one New Zealander.
Home locations come from each player's public IFPA profile, geocoded with Open-Meteo. Distances are straight-line great-circle miles from each pin to the Wandsworth Civic Suite, doubled for the return trip. Two IFPA profiles list a city that doesn't match their listed country (Vancouver under Ireland, Eindhoven under the UK), so those are pinned at the city. Snapshot taken 21 September 2026; registration was still open.
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