888poker XL Autumn Series Returns With Nearly $900K Guaranteed

The 888poker XL Autumn Series is back for another edition, bringing ten days of online tournament action and almost $900,000 in guaranteed prize pools. Running from September 20 through September 29, the festival features 41 tournaments, with the $300,000 guaranteed Mystery Main Event taking center stage.

This year, 888poker has opted for a more streamlined schedule. While the overall guarantee is lower than the $1.5 million offered during last year’s XL Autumn, there are significantly fewer tournaments on the calendar, resulting in more prize money being concentrated in each event.

Across the 41-event schedule, the average guarantee works out at approximately $21,805 per tournament, up from $17,797 last year.

Buy-ins start at just $5.50 and climb to $1,050 for the Super High Roller. Most events remain in the double-digit range, although the average buy-in has increased from $72 last year to $109 in 2026.

The headline tournament of the festival is the $250 Mystery Main Event, which comes with a $300,000 guaranteed prize pool.

Day 1 flights are already underway, giving players several opportunities to secure a place in Day 2. Satellites are also available, including freerolls offering alternative routes into the Main Event.

September 28 will be one of the key dates on the schedule, with Day 2 of both Main Events taking place. Both use the Mystery Bounty format and offer a combined $350,000 in guarantees.

The final tables will also receive additional exposure, with 888poker set to broadcast both Main Event finales live on its official Twitch channel.

Mystery Bounty tournaments have become the defining format of this year's XL Autumn. 26 of the 41 events use the format, accounting for almost 65% of the entire schedule.

Traditional PKO tournaments have a much smaller presence this time around, with only four on the calendar. Three Super Knockout events are also included.

Players looking for something more traditional will still have a few options. Event #02, for example, is a classic $55 freezeout with a $10,000 guarantee and just 45 minutes of late registration.

One format missing entirely from this year's festival is Omaha. Every tournament on the 2026 XL Autumn schedule is played as No-Limit Hold'em, a departure from previous XL festivals that included variants such as PLO-5 and PLO-6.

888poker packed eight tournaments into the opening Sunday, making September 20 the busiest single day of the ten-day festival.

Entry fees for the opening slate range from $8.80 to $525, while the combined guarantees come close to $200,000.

The biggest tournament of the day is Event #06, the $109 Mystery Opening, featuring a $100,000 guarantee. The schedule concludes with a $525 High Roller carrying another $25,000 in guaranteed prize money.

The pace slows slightly during the week, when most days feature three or four tournaments. Another packed Sunday arrives on September 27, with six events and individual guarantees reaching as high as $40,000.

The schedule also includes the $109 UKPL Closer, a $20,000 guaranteed Mystery Bounty connected to the UKPL Manchester festival, 888poker's live event held in partnership with Grosvenor Casinos.

Tournament tickets are also available through the returning Daily Gems promotion.

Players taking part in selected tournaments marked with the Daily Gems label can earn free entries worth up to $55. Nine similarly priced tournaments are included in the promotion, with buy-ins ranging from $11 to $109.

It provides another route into the XL Autumn schedule for players who plan to compete regularly throughout the series.

XL Autumn is the third 888poker XL festival of 2026, following the Winter and Spring editions. The autumn series has occupied its September spot on the calendar since 2021, replacing the former XL Inferno festival traditionally held around the same period.

It arrives during one of the busiest stretches of the online poker year. PokerStars' WCOOP, GGPoker's WSOP Online, ACR Poker's OSS XL, iPoker's iPOPS and CoinPoker's GOPC are all running around the same time.

888poker is also hosting separate Autumn Series festivals across its regulated markets. Ontario players have access to almost C$100,000 in guarantees, while the Italian schedule offers €137,000 across 29 tournaments. Another €133,000 is guaranteed across 15 events on the shared Spain-Portugal network.

Combined with the international schedule, the four editions offer more than $1.2 million in guaranteed prize money.

With the series running through September 29, most of the XL Autumn action is still to come, including the latter stages of the $300,000 guaranteed Mystery Main Event.