By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · May 6, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen
The May 2026 edition of the WSOP International Circuit at Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake, Quebec, opens on Saturday with 18 numbered gold-ring events spread over sixteen days. The schedule, published by WSOP.com on Tuesday, runs to May 25 and is the second of three Playground Circuit stops on the operator's Canadian calendar this year. Ontario players, who travelled to Playground in record numbers for the March stop, will once again be the largest single national contingent in the room.
The opening weekend lays out the format clearly. A pair of CAD$400 Mystery Bounty events at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday open Ring #1 and Ring #2. Sunday brings the first Flight A of the CAD$400 Mini Main, a six-flight grinder with a CAD$400,000 guarantee that runs through the week and finishes on Day 2 the following Saturday. The marquee CAD$2,500 Main Event runs three Day 1 flights from May 21 to 23 with a CAD$2.2 million guarantee, and the festival closes on May 24 with a CAD$5,000 High Roller carrying CAD$500,000 in guarantees.
The Schedule
Eighteen gold rings are on offer across sixteen days. The buy-in spread runs from CAD$400 to CAD$5,000, with the median event at the entry-level CAD$400 tier and most flights re-entry-friendly. The schedule notably includes a CAD$1,000 Colossus over four flights from May 17 to 20, a CAD$600 Pot-Limit Omaha event with no antes on May 21, a CAD$400 Senior Event on May 19, and a CAD$400 Ladies Event on May 22. WSOP.com lists eighteen full events; further satellite and side-event listings are expected in the operator's lobby.
The schedule is broadly consistent with the March 2026 Circuit at the same venue, which set a CAD$4 million-plus Main Event prize pool, the second-largest in WSOP Circuit history outside Las Vegas. The May edition has a slightly tighter Main Event guarantee than March's version, but with three flights and unlimited re-entries, the structure leaves room for a similar overlay-free finish.
Online Qualifiers Run Through GGPoker Ontario
For Ontario players, the operator-side detail is the most important part of the Circuit story. Online qualifiers for every WSOP event at Playground run exclusively on GGPoker, which means Ontario players who want to win a seat from inside the province must do it on the GGPoker Ontario client. The qualifier ladder is the same one that fed the March stop: low-buy-in entry satellites in the Ontario lobby feed mid-buy-in qualifiers that pay direct seats to Playground events, with a typical full-pathway cost in the C$5 to C$50 range.
GGPoker is the official online partner of the WSOP and is the only regulated Ontario poker operator licensed to run WSOP-branded qualifiers. None of the other five regulated Ontario rooms, PokerStars Ontario, 888poker Ontario, BetMGM Poker, PartyPoker Ontario and Bwin Ontario, can sell direct WSOP seats. Players who want to enter Playground events through any other channel must register at the cage in person.
The Travel Calculus
Playground Poker Club sits on the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, roughly twenty minutes from downtown Montreal and approximately five hours by car or seventy-five minutes by direct flight from Toronto Pearson. The room has dedicated tournament infrastructure for the WSOP Circuit including its own scrolling clock displays and dedicated dealer pools. WSOP+ app registration is required, the same digital tournament-registration system used at the 2025 World Series in Las Vegas and at the March 2026 Playground stop.
For an Ontario player evaluating a Playground trip, the math is straightforward. A CAD$400 Mystery Bounty entry plus a Toronto-Montreal weekend produces a meaningful overlay over a comparable online tournament when guaranteed prize pools are this large and when most of the field plays the same events back-to-back. The cost stack is heavier than playing at home, but the field quality and the bracelet-equivalent ring on offer change the equation for any player serious about live tournament results.
The GG Ontario Festival Crossover
The Playground stop also runs in parallel with the second half of GGPoker Ontario's C$8 million GG Ontario Festival, which opened on May 3 and runs to June 9. The Ontario Festival's Medium-tier marquees fall mid-week during the Playground run, including the C$50 Ontario MILLION$ on May 11 and 18, both with C$100,000 guarantees, and the GG World Festival's headline C$525 World Bounty Festival Day 2 falls inside the Playground window on May 18. Ontario players with a busy schedule will likely have to choose between the live and the online flagship events on at least two days.
The competitive picture is similar to the March stop. GGPoker has both the Ontario Festival overlay and the WSOP Circuit qualifier route running simultaneously, and the operator is using May as a flagship month in two parallel tracks. The PokerStars Ontario shutdown that landed today, with the legacy client closing tomorrow and no FanDuel-branded replacement yet announced, removes one possible distraction from the calendar for at least the first half of the Playground run.
What Ontario Players Win
Beyond the prize pools and the WSOP Circuit gold ring, the most consequential prize on the Playground schedule is the qualification spillover into the WSOP 2026 main schedule in Las Vegas, which opens on May 26. WSOP+ identification carries from Kahnawake to the Rio in Las Vegas, and several of the Circuit events feed direct online satellites to the WSOP Main Event. For an Ontario player chasing a Las Vegas trip, Playground is now the cheapest provincial-adjacent route to the live qualifying ladder.
Allen Shen of Toronto won the C$2,000 Main Event at the March 2026 Circuit at Playground for CAD$605,001, the most recent example of an Ontario player capitalising on the venue's proximity. The May Main Event with a CAD$2.2 million guarantee is the larger of the two events on the year so far, and the field will include a deep contingent of returning Toronto-area players hoping for a similar result.
Outlook
The schedule is set, the structures are published, and the Ontario online qualifier route runs through GGPoker. For any Ontario player with a Saturday free and a CAD$400 buy-in to spare, the Mystery Bounty event opening Ring #1 is the entry point. For players willing to travel and chasing the gold ring, the CAD$2,500 Main Event two weeks later is where the field will be biggest and the prize pool largest. For everyone else, the live broadcast feeds from Playground will run on the venue's official channels through the festival window.