Last year's World Snooker champion, John Higgins, is well-known as one of the best snooker players of all time with a truly eventful career highly supported by his wife, Denice, who's always been encouraging Higgins to stay committed to playing snooker.
At the time winning last year's World Snooker Championship he had already accumulated 31 ranking titles which placed him third at the all-time leaderboard, with Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stephen Hendry being the only players to have achieved better results. But let's now see a bit more about his snooker earnings, successes and life beyond the sport.
John Higgins snooker career: World snooker championship wins, ranking titles and many more
Let's take a look now at a short summary of the most important achievements of John Higgins.
- Current net worth: £8.8 million
- Highest ranking: №1 in the world
- World Championship wins: 4
- Triple crowns: 9
- Ranking titles: 33
- Ranking finals: 60
- Number of 147s: 13
In 2026 Higgins broke another record, the one for the oldest finalist in a Triple Crown, after playing against Kyren Wilson for a 10-6 loss.
John Higgins net worth: How rich is the snooker icon?
Since becoming professional in 1992, Higgins has managed to claim quite a lot of titles and prize money which makes it unsurprising to see him having a net worth of around £8.8million. He's sitting ahead of Mark Williams (with £7.1 m) and behind other snooker legends like Steve Davis who's at the top of the list and his net worth is estimated to be £26.5m.
John Higgins Bio: What's the history of one of the most famous snooker players?
After winnings the 1991 World Masters playing as an amateur, John Higgins became a professional snooker player in 1992. Only two years later he managed to become the winner of the 1994 Grand Prix claiming two other ranking events at the same season. That's what helped him to become the first ever teenager in the world of snooker who managed to claim three ranking titles in one season getting him right up into the world's top 16 in 1995.
He kept on with his magic to get lots of other titles throughout the next three years and in 1998 came one of the biggest accomplishments: his first ever world champions title. But that was not all because the next season he managed to become the third even player to hold the winners title to both the World Championship, the UK Championship and the Masters at the same time.
In 2000 he went on to win the UK Championship once more. He also played the Crucible final but lost 18-14 to Ronnie O'Sullivan. He returned the 'favor', though, in 2005 when he performed as a true wisard running 494 points unanswered (and breaking some records, too) to get the Grand Prix title. And some time later he once again confronted O'Sullivan, this time for the Masters title, managing to claim an impressive win.
The five-years period that started in 2007 was one of the best in career of the Scottish player with three world titles, the third of which came in 2011 when he won against Judd Trump with 18-15 to become the third ever player who's been a four-time world champion.
He then kept going a bit slower reaching the World final three times and losing it (last time to Trump) and then heading out to the Masters final in 2021 only to lose it to Yan Bingtao 10-8. But in 2019 he and Stephen Maguire joined their efforts to win the World Cup for the Scottland team. Two years later Higgins won the 2021 Players Championship before hitting another four years with no titles before winnings the World Open and the Tour Championship in 2025.
John Higgins outside of snooker
John Higgins was born in 1975 in Wishaw, Scotland, the city which gives him the nickname The Wizard of Wishaw. He and his wife Denise, who he married in 2000, have two sons, Pierce and Oliver, as well as a daughter, Claudia, and all his three children had frequently supported his father live on his matches.
The couple met as teenagers and John has admitted the proposal was quite a surprising but it looks like a short separation made him realise he wanted to spend his whole life with Denise. That led to their 1998 engagement and the marriage in 2000 and the couple is soon to celebrate their 26th anniversary.
But the snooker legend isn't only close to his nuclear family. That become even more prominent during the 2025 World Snooker Championship where it wasn't even clear whether Higgins would compete after his father-in-law got a heart attack. That made the Scottish quite emotional especially considering his own father died in February 2011 after a long battle with cancer. Tragic news that the Scottish player learned just when he came back from the German Masters.
One of the biggest setbacks in his career came due to the allegations of match-fixing made by the News of the World. Independent tribunal cleared him up from those charges but Higgins was still found guilty for failing to report illegal approach as well as for giving the impression he was going to break the rules. That's what lead to a hefty fine for breach of betting rules together with a six-month ban but The Wizard of Wishaw showed that he would only come back stronger and keep going.
Higgins has also been on no-so-good terms with the BBC during the 2022 World Snooker Championship broadcast as Higgins was featured with the English flag during his game against Thepchaiya Un-Nooh. That enraged the Scottish player and, thankfully, the error was corrected the next day when Higgins secured a win of 10-7 at the World Snooker tournament to advance to the second round of it.
Despite being at the top of the sport for close to 30 years and turning 50 years in 2025, having a huge estimated net worth and a long list of accomplishments, Higgins isn't tired yet. He's made that clear during the World tournament in 2025, telling the interviewer, "The sport will have to retire me before I retire myself, simple as that."
