National Heads-Up Poker Championship Returns This Fall on Peacock and PokerGO

The National Heads-Up Poker Championship is making its return after a twelve-year hiatus in the fall of 2025. Presented by PokerStars, the episodes will premiere on NBC’s streaming service Peacock before they become available on PokerGO for retrospective stream viewing.

Some big-name players have already been confirmed for the upcoming episodes. This year’s Main Event champion, Michael Mizrachi, and WSOP Player of the Year Shaun Deeb will be making appearances. If the two end up facing off, that could provide some satisfaction for those who have been debating which of them was actually more deserving of the Player of the Year honors.

According to PokerGO, some of the others include:

• Jason Koon
• Liv Boeree
• Chris Moneymaker
• Erik Seidel
• Doug Polk
• Phil Galfond

Several non-poker celebrities will also be invited to play.

National Heads-Up Poker Championship format

The event will pit players against each other in one-on-one matches using a single-elimination bracket format. Structurally, it will be similar to a tennis Grand Slam tournament.

Direct heads-up confrontations between top names are rare outside of private challenge matches. The WSOP has just one heads-up tournament: the $25K Heads-Up Championship, which was won by Artur Martirosian this year. Aside from that, the most common time to see heads-up play between the game’s best players is at the end of a Super High Roller, where the fields are generally skewed towards the elite to begin with.

The National Heads-Up Championship was a staple of poker on TV for several years at the height of the poker boom from 2005 to 2011. It was the first poker event to be televised on and produced by a major network.

After its cancellation in 2012, it made a one-year comeback in 2013, but this will be its first run in over a decade. NBC retained the rights to the concept and has decided that the time is ripe for a reboot.

PokerStars and PokerGO have lent their weight to the effort, hoping to bring the series back for a new generation of poker fans and players.

Mori Eskandari, President of PokerGO stated as much when discussing the new series:

The National Heads-Up Poker Championship helped define the golden era of televised poker. We’re proud to partner with PokerStars to bring back a truly iconic brand and share it with a new generation of fans.

Historical winners

The initial run of the series produced eight different champions, with no repeats. Chris Ferguson holds the record for final match appearances at three, although he only won once:

Mike “The Mouth” Matusow won the last iteration of the event with a memorable victory over Phil Hellmuth in the championship final for $750,000.