The 2023 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2023 Cazoo World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 15 April to 1 May 2023 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, the 47th consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship was staged at the venue. The 15th and final ranking tournament of the 2022–23 snooker season, it was organised by the World Snooker Tour and sponsored for the first time by car retailer Cazoo. It was broadcast in the United Kingdom by the BBC, in Europe by Eurosport, and elsewhere in the world by Matchroom Sport and other broadcasters. The total prize fund was £2,395,000, of which the winner received £500,000.
The qualifying rounds took place from 3 to 12 April 2023 at the English Institute of Sport, featuring 128 professional and invited amateur players. The top 16 players from the snooker world rankings and the 16 successful qualifiers reached the tournament's main stage at the Crucible, where a Just Stop Oil protest on 17 April disrupted two first-round matches, leading to additional security measures at the venue. Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having defeated Judd Trump 18–13 in the 2022 final. He made a record 31st Crucible appearance, surpassing the 30 appearances by Steve Davis, and made both his 200th century break at the Crucible and his 1,200th century break in professional competition during his second-round match against Hossein Vafaei. He reached a record-extending 21st quarter-final, also becoming the first player to compete in 100 matches at the Crucible, but lost 10–13 to Belgian player Luca Brecel.
Fan Zhengyi, Jak Jones, Pang Junxu, Si Jiahui, and Wu Yize featured at the main stage for the first time. Jones and Si both progressed to the quarter-finals, marking the first time since the 1988 event that two Crucible debutants had reached the last eight. Si, aged 20, advanced to the semi-finals, becoming the first debutant to reach the last four since Andy Hicks at the 1995 event and the youngest player to do so since O'Sullivan at the 1996 event. Brecel came from 5–14 behind to defeat Si 17–15 in the semi-finals, the first time a player had won a match at the Crucible after trailing by nine frames. Brecel went on to defeat Mark Selby 18–15 in the final, winning his first world title and fourth ranking title. He became the first world champion from mainland Europe and the fourth world champion in the sport's from outside the United Kingdom, after Canada's Cliff Thorburn in 1980, Ireland's Ken Doherty in 1997, and Australia's Neil Robertson in 2010. He reached a career high of second in the world rankings after his win.
A total of 90 century breaks were made during the event's main stage. For only the second time (after the 2008 event), the main stage of the tournament produced two maximum breaks, one by Kyren Wilson in his first-round match against Ryan Day, and the other by Selby, who became the first player to make a maximum in a World Championship final. In his first-round match against Wu, Neil Robertson became the first player to make two 146 breaks in a professional match. Another 135 century breaks were made during the qualifying rounds, including a 115 break by Ng On-yee, the highest by a woman in the tournament's history.
Background
The first World Snooker Championship final took place in 1927 at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham, England, and was won by Joe Davis. Staged annually until 1940, the tournament was put on hiatus during World War II and went into decline in the post-war era; the 1952 World Snooker Championship was contested by only two players and was replaced by the World Professional Match-play Championship, which was also discontinued in 1957. Revived on a challenge basis in 1964, the World Snooker Championship reverted to an annual knockout tournament in 1969. In 1977, the tournament was first staged at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, where it has remained since.
The 2023 event (officially known as the 2023 Cazoo World Snooker Championship) was organised by the World Snooker Tour and sponsored for the first time by British car retailer Cazoo. It marked the 47th consecutive year that the tournament was held at the Crucible, and the 55th successive year that the World Championship was contested through the modern knockout format. It also marked the 40th anniversary of the first maximum break at the tournament, achieved by Cliff Thorburn at the 1983 event. Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having defeated Judd Trump 18–13 in the 2022 final to win his seventh world title, equalling Stephen Hendry's modern-era record. O'Sullivan made a record 31st Crucible appearance at the 2023 event, surpassing the 30 appearances by Steve Davis.