The 1997 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 1997 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 19 April and 5 May 1997. Staged at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, the tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy. Ken Doherty won the only world title of his professional career by defeating the defending champion Stephen Hendry 18–12 in the final. The first player to win world championships at junior, amateur, and professional level, Doherty became the second player from outside the United Kingdom to win the title in the modern era, following Cliff Thorburn in 1980. Doherty remains the only world champion from the Republic of Ireland. Hendry's defeat in the final was his first loss in the World Championship since 1991, which ended his record 29 consecutive Crucible victories.

Tournament summary

Prize fund

The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:

Main draw

Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding ranks (each championship has 16 seeds and 16 qualifiers).

Century breaks

There were 39 century breaks in this year's championship.

Qualifying

The qualifying matches were held between 2 January and March 1997 at the Newport Centre in Newport, Wales. The last round was played at Telford International Centre, Telford on 24 and 25 March 1997.

Round 2–3