World Snooker Championship: Who Has Won the Most Titles in the Modern Era?

O'Sullivan and Hendry Lead the All-Time Rankings

Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stephen Hendry share the record for the most World Snooker Championship titles in the modern era, each having claimed the sport's most prestigious prize on seven occasions. The modern era is widely accepted as beginning in 1969, the point at which the tournament was revived and restructured into the format that broadly exists today. Every statistic referenced in this article relates to that period unless stated otherwise. Data sourced from CueTracker and snooker.org.

Hendry was the first player to reach the seven-title mark, completing the feat in 1999. The Scot's dominance during the 1990s remains one of the most statistically remarkable periods any player has produced at a single major tournament in any sport — five consecutive titles between 1992 and 1996, with further victories in 1990 and 1999 bookending that extraordinary run. All seven of his Crucible titles arrived within a nine-year window, a concentration of success that has never been matched in the modern era.

O'Sullivan's seven titles have been accumulated across a considerably longer timeframe. His first came in 2001, and his most recent in 2022 — a span of 21 years. In between, he won in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2013 and 2020. That spread across three separate decades speaks to a different, arguably even more impressive, form of sustained excellence. Where Hendry's record reflects a period of near-total dominance, O'Sullivan's illustrates an ability to return to peak performance across multiple eras of the sport's development.

The Six-Time Champions: Reardon and Davis

Behind the joint record holders sit two players who each defined their own decade at the Crucible. Ray Reardon, the Welshman who was arguably the sport's dominant force throughout the 1970s, claimed six titles — 1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1978. Steve Davis matched that tally across the following decade, winning in 1981, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1988 and 1989. Both players exemplify how the Crucible has, historically, tended to produce sustained periods of dominance by a single player rather than frequent changes at the top.

The Four-Time Champions

John Higgins and Mark Selby are the only other players to have won the world title on four or more occasions in the modern era. Higgins, who remains an active competitor at the Crucible as of the 2026 tournament, won his titles in 1998, 2007, 2009 and 2011 — a span that covers 13 years and three separate decades, reinforcing his status as one of the sport's most durable elite performers. Selby's four titles — 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2021 — make him the most decorated world champion of his particular generation, a fact that can sometimes be understated given the era in which he has competed.

Multiple Winners: The Full Modern Era Picture

Three titles apiece belong to John Spencer and Mark Williams. Spencer's victories in 1969, 1971 and 1977 place him among the pioneers of the modern tournament, while Williams — another player still competing at the Crucible in 2026 — won his first world title in 2000, his second in 2003 and memorably his third in 2018, a gap of 15 years between the second and third that stands as a testament to his longevity at the highest level.

Alex Higgins, who won in 1972 and again in 1982, rounds out the list of players with multiple modern-era titles. The Northern Irishman's decade-long gap between victories remains one of the more striking intervals between titles in the tournament's history.

A Note on the Pre-Modern Era

Before the modern era began in 1969, the World Snooker Championship operated under substantially different conditions. Typically only two players entered the competition, contesting significantly longer matches with far more frames than the best-of-35 finals introduced in 1980. Joe Davis won the first 15 editions of the tournament between 1927 and 1946, a record that cannot be meaningfully compared to the modern format given the structural differences. Fred Davis and John Pulman each won eight titles apiece prior to 1969, with Walter Donaldson taking two and Horace Lindrum one. These records, while historically significant, are generally treated separately when assessing the contemporary era of the sport.