Belfast is set to play host to one of four snooker tournaments that make up Barry Hearn’s proposed Home Series, where stars will play for a £1 million (€1.386 million) bonus from next year.

Hear, the chairman of World Snooker, announced the Welsh Open, already on the calendar, will be joined by a Scottish Open, Irish Open and English Open from the 2016/17 campaign to make up the series.

And Hearn, speaking at the Crucible on Wednesday, promised any player who won all four in the same season would cash in with the million-pound cheque.

All four events will be full ranking tournaments, and will have to be crammed into an already busy calendar, along with a new European Open event which will also come onto the schedule in the same year.

Hearn called the bonus his “little special prize” and said Glasgow, Belfast and Manchester would stage the three new events.

Prize money for the World Championship winner will shoot up from its current £300,000 (€416,000) to £500,000 (€693,000) for the 2018 tournament, Hearn said.

The European Open will be a roaming event, and could be staged in cities such as Krakow and Lisbon, or in Germany where snooker is a rapidly growing spectator sport.

Hearn has been in charge of the professional snooker tour for the last five years, during which time prize-money has soared and a once bare calendar is now packed out.

“This is a quantum leap from where we are and it’s only just the beginning,” Hearn said. “We’re miles away from peaking. If we’ve come from base camp we’re not even halfway up the mountain.”