Brazil’s all-time leading goalscorer, a former UFC champion and a three-time NFL Pro Bowler all took a seat at the WSOP 2026 in Las Vegas. The 100-bracelet series drew a record 251,899 entries, and hiding among them were some genuinely famous faces.

Neymar came straight from the FIFA World Cup, Sean O’Malley opened the biggest Main Event flight of the summer, and a $1,000,000 buy-in cash game rolled into town beside the bracelet events.

One detail matters before the roll call: most mainstream outlets reported the wrong event for Neymar entirely. Here is every confirmed celebrity appearance, with the record set straight.

Neymar Swaps the World Cup for the WSOP

Brazil’s 2-1 Round of 16 defeat to Norway on 5 July ended Neymar’s World Cup. He scored a stoppage-time penalty, announced his international retirement the same day, and resurfaced in Las Vegas six days later.

Some mainstream reports claimed the 34-year-old had entered the $10,000 Main Event. He had not. The final Main Event Day 1 flight ran on 5 July, the day Brazil were still playing, as the timeline in our live WSOP 2026 Main Event updates makes clear.

The event he actually joined on Saturday, 11 July was the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em 6-Max Championship. The WSOP confirmed as much in its own announcement the following day.

The run lasted one day, but not a quiet one. Faraz Jaka, reporting from the tables, relayed Neymar river-jamming quad nines with :9c: :9s: in the hole and finding no callers.

Jaka also shared the bust hand: a cutoff raise with :9h: :6h:, then a call of a small blind lead on the :7s: :6d: :4c: flop.

The :7h: turn gave the small blind trip sevens with :ad: :7d:. Neymar jammed with middle pair, was snap-called drawing dead, and the :8d: river ended his tournament.

The bust barely dents a tidy recreational record. Neymar’s official Hendon Mob results show $116,632 in live earnings across 11 cashes as of 22 July 2026, topped by $63,400 for 4th place at the Neymar Jr edition of BSOP Sao Paulo last December.

His only WSOP cash remains a 49th-place finish in the $1,000 Super Turbo Bounty in 2022, worth $3,959 from a 2,227-entry field. Four summers on, the bracelet hunt continues.

Sean O’Malley Announces Shuffle Up and Deal

Former UFC bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley handled the ceremony on Main Event Day 1d, calling “Shuffle Up and Deal” for the 4,694-entry flight on 5 July, the largest single starting day of the summer.

The timing was very Suga. Three weeks earlier, O’Malley had knocked out Aiemann Zahabi with a walk-off left hand on the UFC’s White House card, ending the Canadian’s seven-fight winning streak and extending his own to two.

The show did not stop at the microphone either. O’Malley took a seat himself and ground his 60,000 starting stack to a 43,700 bag at the close of play, enough to advance to Day 2d.

That made the 31-year-old one of 3,638 survivors from poker’s biggest starting day of the year, a result plenty of seasoned amateurs would have taken at the bell.

Antoine Winfield Sr. Grinds the Main Event

Antoine Winfield Sr. spent 14 NFL seasons at cornerback for the Buffalo Bills and Minnesota Vikings, a first-round pick in 1999 who earned three Pro Bowl selections in Minnesota.

His poker origin story is pure Moneymaker. Winfield credits watching Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 Main Event win on television for the hobby: “I’ve been competitive all my life, and this is no different.” That same win anchors our ranking of the most influential people in poker history.

He has form here too. Winfield collected his first WSOP cash in 2016, finishing 231st in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event for $2,391, and has kept returning to the Main Event since hanging up his cleats in 2013.

This year the 49-year-old joined the Day 1a field on 2 July and finished the day on 24,600 from the 60,000 starting stack, according to ESPN’s official chip count reporting, and bagged for Day 2.

The family’s NFL story is still running. His son Antoine Winfield Jr., the Tampa Bay Buccaneers safety, was named Defensive MVP of the Pro Bowl in February.

Billionaires in the Million Dollar Game

The crossover was not confined to tournaments. Hustler Casino Live moved its Million Dollar Game from Los Angeles to the WSOP on 12 June: a $1,000,000 minimum buy-in cash game with blinds from $500/$1,000, streamed beside the feature tables. Full session detail sits in our full Million Dollar Game coverage.

DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang supplied the billionaire angle and left a winner, finishing the 14-hour session up close to $1,400,000. Indian businessman Santhosh Suvarna also took a seat.

Alan Keating’s cash game record took a dent. The stream’s most bankable star finished around $1,800,000 down, with only table talk merchant Martin Kabrhel losing more at roughly $2,000,000.

The signature hand was theirs too. Kabrhel’s ace-king held twice across three runouts against Keating’s king-queen suited in a $2,801,000 pot, the second-largest in US livestream ring game history.

How the WSOP 2026 Celebrities Compare With Past Years

Famous names at the WSOP are nothing new, and this year’s crop were mostly returners rather than tourists. Neymar first won a Main Event seat in a Las Vegas satellite back in 2016, gave it up when the Rio Olympics clashed, and finally debuted in the 2022 $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship.

Winfield’s entries stretch back a full decade, and our guide to celebrity poker players tracks plenty more who keep coming back to the felt. What set 2026 apart was how athletic the crop was, with football, MMA and the NFL all in one summer.

It fits a series that broke records everywhere, as our complete WSOP 2026 series recap shows, from record entries to three new nine-time champions.

The famous faces have gone home, but the biggest stage is still to come. The Main Event final table plays live from 3 to 5 August, and where to watch the ESPN finale has every broadcast option.