Is Ronnie O'Sullivan Playing in the Northern Ireland Open? Yes, Monday

Yes. Ronnie O'Sullivan is in the draw as the 15th seed and plays Cheung Ka Wai in the last 64 on Monday afternoon at the Waterfront Hall. No withdrawal had been announced by Saturday morning, and the question is a fair one, because he has not hit a ball in Belfast for four years.

He pulled out for medical reasons in 2023, when Rory McLeod took his place in the draw. He withdrew again in 2024, giving Long Zehuang a walkover. Last year he did not enter. His last match here was in October 2022, when he arrived as world No. 1 and reigning world champion and lost 4–3 to David Grace, then ranked 49th. O'Sullivan led 2–0, Grace took three frames in a row with breaks of 57, 94 and 64, and the decider ended with O'Sullivan going in-off.

A format he has stopped playing

Belfast is one of the four Home Nations events, and their early rounds are best of seven. O'Sullivan has largely left that part of the calendar alone. He has not played a Home Nations match since September 2024, when He Guoqiang beat him 4–2 at the English Open. In July he withdrew from this season's English Open too, handing Liam Davies a walkover.

That matters because seven frames is the length at which reputations count for least. The longer formats he still plays give a great player time to recover from a slow start. In Belfast, two loose frames against a player in form can be the whole match, which is roughly what happened against Grace.

His season so far has been uneven. At the Wuhan Open in August he beat Ashley Carty, Yao Pengcheng, Stephen Maguire and Mark Selby, making centuries of 106, 110 and 129 along the way, before Chang Bingyu beat him 6–3 in the semi-finals. Afterwards he was blunt about his own game: "The disease came back big time today." He added that he had committed to playing for another 18 months. Then in Shenzhen at the end of September, Jiang Jun beat him 5–2 on the opening day of the Shenzhen Open.

Cheung arrives match-sharp

Cheung Ka Wai won his tour card back through Q School in May and had to qualify for Belfast. He did it the hard way, with two deciding-frame wins in September: 4–3 against Artemijs Žižins and 4–3 against Oliver Lines, making a 123 in the second.

Deciders are his normal territory this season. Four of his six best-of-7 matches since June have gone to a final frame. He won two and lost two, both defeats at the summer events, 4–3 to Michael Holt at the British Open and 4–3 to Chang Bingyu at the English Open, where he made a 129 in defeat.

The bigger stages have been harder. Cheung lost 4–0 to Si Jiahui in the last 64 here last year, 5–0 to Judd Trump at the German Masters in January and 5–1 to Jack Lisowski at the World Open in March. That is one frame won across three last-64 matches against established players. The one hint the other way came in July's Championship League, where he beat Lisowski 3–0.

So Monday sets a player who has not played a Home Nations match in two years against one who has spent the season living on deciding frames.

The road beyond Monday

The winner meets Stuart Bingham or Yao Pengcheng in the last 32. O'Sullivan beat Yao 5–1 in Wuhan in August. After that the section holds the winner of Zhao Xintong against Gao Yang, or David Gilbert against Oliver Sykes. The full schedule is on the Northern Ireland Open 2026 hub.

The Form Rating makes O'Sullivan a 55% favourite, against 45% for Cheung. That is closer than the names suggest, and the number comes with a caveat: we hold only O'Sullivan's matches against players we track, so his rating rests on a partial record. Over seven frames, a 55–45 match is close to a coin toss. Saengkham's run in Taiyuan, which went through O'Sullivan in the last 16, shows how quickly a lower-ranked player in form can turn a draw over.

O'Sullivan was runner-up in Belfast three years running, losing 9–7 to Trump in the 2018, 2019 and 2020 finals. He has never won the title. On Monday, the first job is simply to play a match here again.