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Wrapping Up 2025 — Hello, 2026

Wrapping Up 2025 — Hello, 2026
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Max Streltcoff Editor-In-Chief
Fact Checked: PokerListings
  • Updated: December 31, 2025
  • Read time: 4 min

Hi! This is Max from PokerListings. As 2025 comes to an end, on behalf of the entire PokerListings team, I want to thank all of you for being with us this year. We worked hard and managed to do a lot to make the world of poker brighter for you. I hope our efforts were not in vain and that you enjoyed reading and watching our content.
In 2025, more than half a million unique visitors opened our English-language website, and the most popular regional site was fr.pokerlistings.com, which was visited by 160K unique users. The strongest growth in interest came from Brazil, where we recorded a fourfold increase in visitors.

I would also like to thank everyone who followed us on social media — our team prepared a special video for you:

As the editor-in-chief of the project, I want to thank everyone who worked and continues to work on the revival of PokerListings: all our authors, content creators, advertising managers, and even the lawyers. You’re awesome — thank you for your work!

What We Worked On Together in 2025

We accomplished a lot: we worked at live poker series, took part in conferences, and came close to major industry awards. Below are some of the standout moments and unique milestones of the year I’d like to highlight.

Launch of live chat

We tried to stay in close contact with our audience, and in May 2025, we added a live chat to the site where you can contact us with any questions. Over the year, 1,720 people reached out to us (and we missed 177 of those messages — sorry about that). The record was set on August 15, when 69 people wrote to us in one day. I remember that evening very well. Don’t hesitate to write!

Launch of traffic data

In the second half of the year, we launched near real-time traffic data for cash tables in poker rooms. Now you can see how many players are available in poker rooms at specific limits and in specific poker formats right now. This also allowed us to calculate the market share of online cash games, which you can read about in this post.

The largest room turned out to be GGPoker with 36% of players, followed by PokerStars (25%) and WPT Global (15%). The main candidate to break into the top three is CoinPoker (9%), and we hope to see a fight for the top 3 already in 2026.

Poker legality in the US

We closely follow the long and complex process of online poker legalization in the US. This year, we created a country map with detailed information about the poker status in each state.

You may have already noticed that the number of states with legal online poker continues to grow, and states where poker is already legal are gradually joining into a single network. We believe this trend will continue, and over the next decade we will see a renaissance of poker in the US.

At the same time, it’s worth noting that 2024 and 2025 were peak years for the sweepstakes format, and new players such as Stake and Clubs Poker entered the US market. In the second half of 2025, we saw a negative reaction from regulators toward this format, but it seems the genie is already out of the bottle.

What users underestimated in 2025

For some time now, we haven’t been updating our poker quiz format because we don’t see enough interest from you. We tried to make industry information more engaging, which is why we created a quiz about Phil Ivey and a quiz about incredible poker bets. We enjoyed making them and hope you’ll give this format a second chance!

Our plans for 2026

Starting in January, we have planned intensive work on new promotional offers. We want to offer you more unique opportunities than before. We will focus on benefits for players who register through our links — the audience that supports us. For these players, we will introduce new services and new opportunities. Our plan for the first quarter is already in place; now we just hope we can successfully deliver it and that you’ll be satisfied!

And what are your plans for 2026?

We hope you have big plans and that you succeed in achieving them. We wish you good luck not only at the poker tables, but in all your other endeavors as well. Happy New Year!

P.S.

If you’re not sure how to spend the upcoming weekend, take a look at our 2025 wrap-up posts — the team put a lot of effort into them for you:

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Written By: Max Streltcoff Editor-In-Chief

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