The World Darts Championship 2026/27 starts on Friday 11 December and ends with a Sunday-night final on 3 January 2027 at Alexandra Palace; the world darts championship schedule, round by round, is below. Most people still search for it as the World Darts Championship 2026, which is fair enough: two thirds of it happens before New Year. It is the biggest edition yet, with 128 players, £5,000,000 in prize money and, for the first time, the Great Hall instead of the West Hall. This page holds the confirmed facts on the format, the world darts championship prize money and tickets, and gets the draw the day it is made.
World Darts Championship 2026 dates and the move to the Great Hall
Play begins four days earlier than last year, on Friday 11 December, and the final moves to a Sunday for the first time. Sky Sports reported on 6 August that the Great Hall holds over 5,200 spectators, against the 3,200 the West Hall took. The PDC has signed with Alexandra Palace to keep the event there until 2031.
That is a big room for darts. Anyone who watched the old West Hall nights will remember how tight the tables were. Whether a crowd of 5,000 still sounds like the Ally Pally of the Taylor and Van Gerwen years is something nobody can know until the first Friday.
World darts championship schedule by round
There are 36 sessions in total. Afternoon sessions start at 12.30pm and evening sessions at 7pm, with a few late starts for the business end.
| Round | Dates |
|---|---|
| First round (last 128) | Fri 11 Dec to Sat 19 Dec |
| Second round (last 64) | Sun 20 Dec to Wed 23 Dec |
| Christmas break | from Thu 24 Dec |
| Third round (last 32) | Sun 27 Dec to Tue 29 Dec |
| Fourth round (last 16) | Tue 29 Dec (evening) and Wed 30 Dec |
| Quarter-finals | Fri 1 Jan, afternoon and evening |
| Semi-finals | Sat 2 Jan, evening |
| Final | Sun 3 Jan, evening |
The opening Friday and Monday 14 December have evening sessions only. The order of matches within each session follows the draw, so the detailed world darts championship schedule, match by match, arrives with it and goes straight into this table and the darts on TV guide.
The draw and the field of 128
Places are split three ways. The top 40 of the PDC world rankings qualify, then the top 40 from the Pro Tour rankings who are not already in, and 48 international places fill the rest: regional qualifiers from Asia, Europe, North America, the Nordic and Baltic countries, Australia and New Zealand, two new places for African players, the World Youth Champion, the leading players on the Development and Challenge Tours, and four women. The top 32 are seeded, and every one of the 128 starts in the first round.
The PDC has not yet announced when the draw for the World Darts Championship 2026 will be made. The rankings that decide the seeds are still moving, with Pro Tour events left in November. Once the draw is out, the full bracket appears on this page.
Format: sets, and the two-clear-legs rule
| Round | Format |
|---|---|
| First and second round | best of 5 sets |
| Third and fourth round | best of 7 sets |
| Quarter-finals | best of 9 sets |
| Semi-finals | best of 11 sets |
| Final | best of 13 sets |
Sets are best of five legs. In a deciding set a player has to win by two clear legs, with a sudden-death leg at 5–5. No change to the match format has been announced for this edition.
World darts championship prize money
The world darts championship prize money stays at the level the PDC set from the 2025/26 edition: £5,000,000 in total and £1,000,000 for the champion.
| Stage reached | Prize |
|---|---|
| Winner | £1,000,000 |
| Runner-up | £400,000 |
| Semi-finalists | £200,000 |
| Quarter-finalists | £100,000 |
| Last 16 | £60,000 |
| Last 32 | £35,000 |
| Last 64 | £25,000 |
| Last 128 | £15,000 |
A first-round loser at Alexandra Palace takes home £15,000. At Lakeside, five days before the first dart here, the Open runner-up gets £16,000 at the WDF World Championship 2026. That single comparison explains most of what is written on the Lakeside versus Ally Pally page, and much of what followed the 1993 split.
Tickets
For the first time the PDC sold tickets by ballot: a record 180,000 seats, allocated in two stages that closed in September. Members’ entries ran from 1 to 7 September and the general ballot from 8 to 14 September. Prices started at £55 for tiered seating and £75 for table seating, with the 501 Club from £399; for the final, a tiered seat was £95 and a table seat £110. Anyone who missed out can only buy through the official See Tickets Fan-to-Fan resale platform, which is the PDC’s own route and the one to use rather than secondary sites.
Where to watch
Sky Sports has every session live in the UK. In the United States the PDC’s deal with ESPN covers the championship on ESPN2 and ESPN+. Viewers in countries without a broadcaster can use PDCTV, subject to the usual geo-restrictions.
Luke Littler and the third title
Luke Littler beat Gian van Veen 7–1 in January to win the title for the second year running, and arrives having won 18 of his 19 matches at Alexandra Palace. Three in a row has not been done since Phil Taylor won in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Whether a 19-year-old who already holds the World Masters, UK Open, World Cup, World Matchplay and Premier League titles from 2026 can be stopped in a bigger, louder room is the question the next two months will be spent talking about; the answer will be on this page by the evening of 3 January.
