2021 World Snooker Championship

The 2021 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2021 Betfred World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 17 April to 3 May 2021 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the 45th consecutive year the World Snooker Championship was held at the Crucible Theatre and the 15th and final ranking event of the 2020–21 snooker season. It was organised by the World Snooker Tour. The event was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred and broadcast by the BBC, Eurosport and Matchroom Sport. It featured a total prize fund of £2,395,000 of which the winner received £500,000.

Qualifying for the tournament took place between 5 and 14 April 2021 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. There were 128 participants in the qualifying rounds, consisting of a mix of professional and invited amateur players. The main stage of the tournament featured 32 players: the top 16 players from the snooker world rankings and an additional 16 players from the qualifying rounds. Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having won his sixth world title at the previous year's event, where he defeated Kyren Wilson 18–8 in the final. O'Sullivan lost in the second round to Anthony McGill 12–13. Mark Selby defeated Shaun Murphy 18–15 in the final to win his fourth world title and the 20th ranking title of his career. There were a record 108 century breaks made at the Crucible, with an additional 106 made in qualifying rounds. The tournament's highest break was 144 by Murphy in the second round.

The World Snooker Championship features 32 professional players competing in one-on-one snooker matches in a single-elimination format, each match played over a number of frames. The 32 players for the event are selected through a mix of the snooker world rankings and a pre-tournament qualifying stage. The first World Snooker Championship final took place in 1927. The final was held at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham, England, and the title was won by Joe Davis. Since 1977, the event has been held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It is organised by World Snooker along with the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA). As of 2022^[update], Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan are the event's most successful participants in the modern era, having both won the championship seven times. The 2020 championship had been won by English player Ronnie O'Sullivan, who defeated compatriot Kyren Wilson in the final 18–8 to win his sixth world title. The event was returned to its traditional April schedule after the 2020 championship was delayed to late July because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The winner of the 2021 championship received £500,000 from a total prize fund of £2,395,000.

The 2021 World Snooker Championship took place between 17 April and 3 May 2021 at the Crucible Theatre. The event featured a 32-player main draw, preceded by a 128-player qualifying draw held at the English Institute of Sport. Qualifying for the event was played between 5 and 14 April, finishing three days before the start of the main draw. The qualifying stage was played over four rounds, and the higher-ranked players were seeded and given byes to the later rounds. The tournament was the last of 15 ranking events in the 2020–21 season on the World Snooker Tour. It was the 45th consecutive year that the tournament had been held at the Crucible, and the 53rd successive world championship to be contested through the modern knockout format. The tournament was sponsored by sports betting company Betfred, as it had been since 2009.

The top 16 players in the latest 2020–21 snooker world rankings automatically qualified for the main draw as seeded players. Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan was automatically seeded first overall. The remaining 15 seeds were allocated based on the latest world rankings, released after the 2021 Tour Championship. Matches in the first round of the main draw were played as the best of 19 frames, second-round matches and quarter-finals were played as the best of 25 frames, and the semi-finals were played as the best of 33 frames. The final was played over two days as a best-of-35-frames match.

The tournament was broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC and Eurosport. The event was broadcast in Europe and Australia by Eurosport. Other international broadcasts were provided by Kuaishou, Migu, Zhibo.tv, Youku, and CCTV in China; by NowTV in Hong Kong; and by DAZN in Canada, the United States, and Brazil. In territories where there was no other coverage, the event was broadcast by Matchroom Sport.

On 13 March 2021, World Snooker announced that the championship would welcome a limited number of spectators, as part of the Events Research Programme run by the British government in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Details were announced on 7 April, beginning with an audience of 33 per cent of the arena's full capacity for the first round, an increasing number of spectators through the tournament, and a full-capacity crowd to be admitted for the final. All spectators were tested for COVID-19 before and after attending the event.

The winner of the event received £500,000 from a total prize fund of £2,395,000. The breakdown of prize money is shown below: