Jose Aguilera Wins the 2026 CEP Madrid Main Event (€53,500)

The third stop of the PokerStars Spanish Poker Championship (CEP) took place at the Gran Casino Madrid, and it was a truly memorable occasion. The €500 buy-in CEP Madrid Main Event attracted 801 entrants, and Jose Aguilera outlasted them all. His reward? €53,500.

The 801 entrants represented a near-16% increase on the 2025 attendance, showing that live poker is booming in Spain.

Oscar Alvarez was the first of the nine finalists to bow out; his ninth-place exit came with €5,850 in prize money. Frenchman Yannick Autaa busted in eighth for €6,900, his largest recorded live score since September 2021.

Seventh place and a career-best €8,150 went to Javier Saez before Miguel Castejon saw his tournament end in a sixth-place finish worth €9,730.

With Castejon out of the way, the final five players locked in a five-figure score. Gonzalez Padilla, who cashed in this event in 2022 and again in 2025, completed a hat trick of in-the-money finishes in the CEP Madrid Main Event with a fifth-place finish worth €11,960.

Portugal’s Hugo Tavares fell in fourth and got his hands on €15,200. This was Tavares’ second-largest live score, trailing only the €30,500 he banked for a fourth-place finish in a €1,100 High Roller at this casino in November 2025.

Third place went to Andres Justamante, who collected €21,500. That is by far his largest prize, eclipsing the €800 previous best.

Heads-up pitted Aguilera against Joan Escrigas. No deal was struck despite a €19,500 difference (39 buy-ins) in the first and second-place prize money. That lack of a deal meant Escrigas had to make do with a €33,000 runner-up prize when Aguilera, who banked €53,500, got the better of him in the one-on-one battle.

CEP Madrid Main Event Final Table Results

It wasn’t only the Main Event that saw its attendance increase year-on-year. The Mini CEP saw Marcello Di Pietro come out on top of a 278-strong field, while Pedro Gines took down the 121-strong High Roller.

CEP Barcelona is on the Horizon

The ever-popular CEP heads to Barcelona, calling the Casino Barcelona home from August 3-16. No sooner as the CEP Barcelona festival wrapped up, Casino Barcelona hosts the 2026 edition of the PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) Barcelona festival, one of the original and most popular stops on the EPT.

Matthew Pitt hails from Leeds, West Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom, and has worked in the poker industry since 2008, and worked for PokerNews since 2010. In September 2010, he became the editor of PokerNews. Matthew stepped away from live reporting duties in 2015, and now concentrates on his role of Senior Editor for the PokerNews.