Battle of Malta Heads to Barcelona for First Spanish Edition
Casino Barcelona will host a €600 Main Event in January 2027, with deep starting stacks and a three-day conclusion.
- Casino Malta and Casino Barcelona will hold the first Battle of Malta Barcelona Edition from Jan. 20-24, 2027.
- The festival’s €600 Main Event starts players with 40,000 chips and uses 40-minute levels on its regular opening days.
- Day 2 begins Jan. 23, while the final day is scheduled for Jan. 24.
- The Malta Autumn Edition had drawn 5,368 entries and generated a prize pool of about €2.4 million when the Barcelona event was announced.
Battle of Malta will stage its first Barcelona edition at Casino Barcelona from Jan. 20-24, 2027, taking the festival to Spain through a partnership between Casino Malta and the Barcelona venue.
PokerNews reported that the new stop follows the Battle of Slovakia at Card Casino Bratislava. Casino Malta General Manager Slawomir Switalski called the Barcelona launch a significant milestone in the operator’s international growth strategy and said the partnership reflected an ambition to bring the festival to more leading European casino destinations.
The Jan. 20-24 festival will be led by a €600 Main Event. Players will receive 40,000 chips, with the standard opening days using 40-minute levels from 100/100 blinds, giving entrants 400 big blinds at the start. A turbo Day 1d will instead use 20-minute levels.
The regular Day 1 structure includes a 20-minute break after Level 4 and a 45-minute dinner break after Level 8. Registration closes after Level 11; players entering at the last possible point, before Level 12, will have 16 big blinds.
Day 2 begins at 5 p.m. on Jan. 23 and is set for 11 levels of 50 minutes. The final day starts at 4 p.m. on Jan. 24, when levels extend to one hour until a champion is crowned.
Casino Barcelona General Manager Xavier Ballena said hosting the festival fitted the venue’s aim of becoming a destination for prestigious international poker events. Casino Barcelona’s Sixers Poker Series opened in October, as covered in our earlier report.
The expansion arrives while the Malta stop is drawing large fields. At the time of the Barcelona announcement, the €600 Battle of Malta Autumn Edition had reached 5,368 entries, generating a prize pool of about €2.4 million and a top prize of €227,835.
