Northern Ireland Open Countdown
The defending champion's season, told in numbers: a 9-8 triumph in Belfast, a Welsh Open final in February, and not a single match won since 3 September.
Twelve months after beating Judd Trump 9-8 to win his first ranking title, Jack Lisowski returns to the Waterfront Hall as defending Northern Ireland Open champion - on the longest winless run of his season. The numbers behind the slide, and why Belfast might be exactly the wrong place for the rest of the draw to meet him.
Next Sunday the Northern Ireland Open returns to the Waterfront Hall, and with it the champion. Jack Lisowski will walk back into the venue where, twelve months ago, he finally did the thing snooker had waited years for him to do: win a ranking title, beating Judd Trump 9-8 in a final-frame decider in Belfast.
The difference is the silence around him this time. A year on from that night, Lisowski arrives as defending champion without a win in 39 days, his season quietly unravelling while the sport looks elsewhere - at world champion Wu Yize, at the Chinese one-two at the top of the rankings, at Ali Carter's English Open triumph at 47.
And yet no name on the Belfast marquee has more to prove, or more to lose.
Jack Lisowski's season, at a glance.
Lisowski beat Judd Trump in a final-frame decider at the Waterfront Hall on 26 October 2025 to lift his first ranking title.
He added a Welsh Open final in February, losing to Barry Hawkins in his hunt for a second title.
No match won since beating Lyu Haotian at the British Open on 3 September 2026.
The British Open defeat to Mark Selby, the day after his last win, in which he did not take a frame.
Judd Trump leads their rivalry 16-9, but the most recent of them all was last year's Belfast final, won by Lisowski 9-8.
The pattern did not start as a collapse. After lifting the trophy in Belfast last October, Lisowski carried his form through to the Welsh Open final in February, where Barry Hawkins stopped his hunt for a second title. A 6-5 defeat to John Higgins in Shanghai in July was close enough to count as form.
What followed did not. At the British Open in September he ground out three wins in three days, then ran into Mark Selby and lost every frame, 5-0. At the English Open he went out to Fan Zhengyi. And in Leicester, in the International Championship qualifiers, Ashley Carty took his place in China from him.
By the time the players walk out at the Waterfront Hall, Lisowski will have gone more than six weeks without winning a match. The defending champion is not the favourite any more - he is the question.
Every recorded result since the Shanghai Masters, most recent first, pulled live from MyiCue's match history.
Frame scores appear in the guide once recorded in the results feed.
Here is the case for Lisowski, and it is not sentimental. The Waterfront Hall is the one venue on the tour where he is the most recent winner. The 9-8 final he took from Judd Trump here is the biggest result of his career and the most recent chapter in a rivalry that has spanned 25 matches. Champions defend at the places that made them, and Belfast made Lisowski.
Here is the case against. Form does not care about sentiment, and the numbers above are not a blip: they are six weeks of evidence. The man who arrives in Belfast this week is not the man who left it with the trophy last October.
Which one turns up? Have your say in the members' poll below, and tell us in the comments.
MyiCue
Previous meetings from snooker.org
Source: snooker.org | Completed matches only