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The Grand Prix Finale 2026 will take place in Vienna, Austria, on January 28 to 31st, in the University of Vienna.
The event will welcome 16 players, qualified through the Grand Prix Circuit 2026 bonus tournaments: players with a direct seats, then players with the most bonus points.
You can see the current list in the standings. Participants will be contacted through their federation and required to confirm their participation before the end of 2026.
A more complete and better webpage with the full information will appear in November, but you can already find most of it below.
Date: 28-31st January 2027
Venue: Vienna University, Vienna, Austria
Host organizers: Austrian Go Federation, Go7, Lanke Weiqi
System: Group stage / Final stage
Provisional schedule:
| Group Stage | |
|---|---|
| Thursday, 28th January | |
| 14:30 | Opening / Drawing |
| 15:00 | Round 1 (stage 1) |
| Friday, 29th January | |
| 09:30 | Round 2 (stage 1) |
| 13:30 | Round 3 (stage 1) |
| 17:00 | Tiebreak round 1 (optional) |
| 18:15 | Tiebreak round 2 (optional) |
| Final Stage | |
|---|---|
| Saturday, 30th January | |
| 10:00 | Quarterfinals |
| 14:30 | Semifinals (also rounds for places 5–8) |
| Sunday, 31th January | |
| 10:00 | Final games for 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th place |
| 14:00 | Prizegiving / Closing |
Group Stage: players are seeded in 4 groups. Depending on the number of Bonus Points they won in the tournaments of the Grand Prix Circuit 2026, they join “pots” from which one player will join a Group each time.
At the end of this Group stage, the two best of each group join the quarterfinals. If there are even results, tie-breaks are played.
The Final Stage is a classical bracket from quarterfinals, with losers playing for the 5th to 8th places.
Players who will not reach the Final Stage are welcome to join the Vienna Open, which will start on the weekend.
Rules: The tournament follows the EGF General Tournament rules, the games are played in Chinese rules.
Even games
Fischer time: 45 minutes basic + 20s per move
Stop the clock if more than 3 stones must be picked up
Tournament Director: Mirta Medak
Referee: TBC
Pairing system (provisional):
Details of the pairing system
Group stage (3 rounds)
The group stage is a round robin system – All players in a group must play 3 games.
The top 2 players per group qualify for the quarterfinals, there are no more games for players ending 3rd and 4th place within their group.
The players are seeded depending on the number of bonus points accumulated to qualify.
- Round 1 (Thursday afternoon): per group (A–D) pot #1 vs pot #3 and pot #2 vs pot #4 (1–3 and 2–4)
- Round 2 (Friday morning): winners vs winners, losers vs losers of round 1
- Round 3 (Friday afternoon): automatically defined
Tiebreaks (Group Stage)
- Mutual game, if two players with equal number of wins, also valid after special tie-break games (see next point)
- With three players equal number of wins, two more games will be played following a special system. After this decision the mutual game might decide about number 1 and number 2 after the 3 rounds in the group.
Final rounds — Pairings
The final stage is a classical knock-out system with quarterfinals, semi and final.
For the quarterfinals, the players are seeded according to their results in the Groups (A1-C2, A2-C1, B1-D2, B2-D1).
Then, winners play together and loses play together (loser(A1/C2) — loser(B2/D1), loser(A2/C1) — loser(B1/D2))
Final/Small final/Round 6
5th & 8th places: winners/losers of the bottom-bracket cross-matches
1st place: winner of the two semifinal winners
3rd place: winner of the two semifinal losers
Prize Money: To be confirmed after the final GP Circuit events take place.
It shall be similar to last year (around 9000€ and more than 4000€ for the top 8). Last year, this included 150€ starting prize-money and 100€ per won game in the Group stage main games.