Elsewhere, Tariq Mahmoud overturned Aiden Brooks in a dramatic five-set encounter marked by repeated momentum swings, with Mahmoud’s finishing proving decisive late on. Felix Grant recorded the most emphatic win of the session, sweeping aside Omar Khaled without dropping a set while posting the highest average of the day. Nathan Reeves also went the distance to overcome Youssef Ibrahim, showing resilience after being pulled back twice. The session concluded with Ahmed Hassan defeating Nate Parker in four sets, underlining a round shaped more by unpredictability than ranking.
Elsewhere, Tariq Mahmoud overturned Aiden Brooks in a dramatic five-set encounter marked by repeated momentum swings, with Mahmoud’s finishing proving decisive late on. Felix Grant recorded the most emphatic win of the session, sweeping aside Omar Khaled without dropping a set while posting the highest average of the day. Nathan Reeves also went the distance to overcome Youssef Ibrahim, showing resilience after being pulled back twice. The session concluded with Ahmed Hassan defeating Nate Parker in four sets, underlining a round shaped more by unpredictability than ranking.
== Schedule ==
The event will consist of 36 sessions held across 20 days from 10 December 2025 until the date of the final on Saturday, 7 January 2026.
The 2026 IDF World Darts Championship is an ongoing professional darts tournament that began on 10 December 2025 and will end on 7 January 2026 at Alexandra Palace in London, England. It is the 4th World Darts Championship to be organised by the International Darts Federation and the 4th to be held at Alexandra Palace. The winner will receive $1,000,000 from a total prize fund of $5,000,000.
The tournament will feature a 128 player field, with the top 32 players on the IDF Order of Merit being seeded in the first round. Alex Brow is the defending champion, having defeated Logan White 7–4 in the 2025 final to win his first world title.
Alex Brow will enter the tournament as the defending champion after winning the 2025 event.
The International Darts Federation (IDF) was founded in 2022 to provide greater opportunities for players outside the established Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) system, particularly in Australia, where many competitors identified as casual or semi-professional sought access to major events with comparable prize funds. The federation staged its inaugural IDF World Darts Championship in 2023, with Alexandra Palace in London serving as the host venue since the beginning.
The upcoming 2026 IDF World Darts Championship will be the fourth edition of the tournament and the fourth consecutive to be held at Alexandra Palace, running from 10 December 2025 to 7 January 2026. A record field of 128 players, including 32 seeds, will compete following the IDF’s March 2025 decision to expand the draw from 96 to 128 entrants. Alex Brow will return as defending champion after defeating Logan White 7–4 in the 2025 final to claim his first world title.
Format
Under the new format, all players – including the 32 seeds – will enter the tournament in the first round, a change from previous years where seeds entered in the second round. The 32 seeds will be the top 32 players on the IDF Order of Merit heading into the tournament. The seeded players, plus players ranked 33–64 drawn at random, will be placed on the left hand side of the draw, and will be matched up against the remaining 64 qualifiers drawn at random.
All matches will consist of games of 501, where players are required to reduce their score from 501 to zero in order to win a leg, finishing on a double or the bullseye. The matches are played in set format, with the amount of sets required to win a match increasing as the tournament progresses. All sets will be played to the best of five legs in the first round, and also in non-deciding sets of subsequent rounds. In the deciding set of all but the first round, the first player to win at least three legs and be leading by two or more will win the set and the match. If the set reaches a 5–5 tie without a winner, it will be decided by a sudden death leg.
Round
Best of (sets)
First to (sets)
First & second
5
3
Third & fourth
7
4
Quarter-finals
9
5
Semi-finals
11
6
Final
13
7
Ranking
The IDF's main world ranking system, the IDF Order of Merit, is calculated on a two-year cycle. Prize money won by players in ranking tournaments are removed from their ranking after 104 weeks, meaning players who participated in the 2024 World Championship, who did not lose their IDF Tour Card during the two-year period, will be 'defending' their prize money from that event. At the end of the tournament, the prize money won at the 2026 tournament will be added and the prize money won at the 2024 tournament will be removed. After the tournament, the top 64 players in the IDF Order of Merit will receive a one-year extension on their Tour Card, joined by the players who earned two-year Tour Cards in 2025 who will enter their second year in 2026. Players with two or more years on their Tour Card, who finish outside of the top 64, will lose their Tour Card and see their ranking reset to $0, along with all other players who earned prize money in ranking tournaments without holding a Tour Card.
Prize money
On 31 March 2025, the IDF announced the biggest prize money increase in the organisation's history, starting from the 2026 season onward. Coinciding with the expansion of the field to 128 players, the World Championship's total prize money and winner's share doubled from $2,500,000 to $5,000,000 and from $500,000 to $1,000,000 respectively; this was the first time the tournament's prize money increased. The winner will also receive the IDF World Trophy. The prize money breakdown is shown below:
Position (no. of players)
Prize money
(Total: $5,000,000)
Winner
(1)
$1,000,000
Runner-up
(1)
$400,000
Semi-finalists
(2)
$200,000
Quarter-finalists
(4)
$100,000
Fourth round losers
(8)
$60,000
Third round losers
(16)
$35,000
Second round losers
(32)
$25,000
First round losers
(64)
$15,000
Qualification
Alex Brow will enter the tournament as the defending champion after winning the 2025 event.
The 128-player field will comprise three sets of qualification routes. The top 40 players on the two-year IDF Order of Merit after the 2025 Players Championship Finals will qualify automatically, followed by the next 40 highest-ranked players on the one-year IDF Pro Tour Order of Merit. The remaining 48 places will go to various international qualifiers.
Background
Order of Merit qualifiers
32 players qualified for the tournament by virtue of being ranked in the top 32 of the IDF Order of Merit. Defending champion Alex Brow is the number two seed, retaining
Order of Merit qualifiers
40 players qualified for the tournament by virtue of being ranked in the top 40 of the PDC Order of Merit. Defending champion Luke Littler is the number one seed going into the tournament, having achieved world number one status on his way to winning the 2025 Grand Slam. He enters the World Championship off the back of claiming his sixth major title of 2025 at the Players Championship Finals; his other titles included the last World Championship, the World Matchplay and his second Grand Slam. Luke Humphries, the 2024 world champion and previous world number one, is the second seed. He won two major titles during the season—the World Masters and the Premier League—and finished as runner-up at a further three major tournaments. The third seed is three-time world champion Michael van Gerwen, who ended a two-year major title drought by winning the World Series Finals in September. Two-time World Championship semi-finalist and former BDO world champion Stephen Bunting is the fourth seed. Welsh number one Jonny Clayton and 2022 UK Open champion Danny Noppert are the fifth and sixth seeds, while four-time World Championship semi-finalist James Wade is seeded seventh in his 22nd appearance at the tournament. 2025 semi-finalist Chris Dobey and 2021 world champion Gerwyn Price completed the top ten alongside tenth seed Gian van Veen, who achieved his first major title at the European Championship and retained his World Youth Championship during the year.
Former world champions Gary Anderson, Rob Cross, Michael Smith and Peter Wright are all amongst the seeded players. Josh Rock and Daryl Gurney, who won the World Cup for Northern Ireland, are the 11th and 22nd seeds. 13th seed Martin Schindler is one of eight German players taking part—a tournament record. Nathan Aspinall, the most prolific player on the 2025 European Tour with three titles, is the 15th seed after finishing as runner-up to Littler at the Players Championship Finals. 19th seed Jermaine Wattimena claimed his first two PDC ranking titles in 2025 Players Championship events. Former major champions who are also seeded include 2022 European champion Ross Smith, 2024 World Grand Prix champion Mike De Decker, 2020 World Matchplay champion Dimitri Van den Bergh, 2024 European champion Ritchie Edhouse and 2022 Masters champion Joe Cullen; Cullen secured the 32nd and final seeded position. Outside of the top 32 seeds, eight more players qualified through the PDC Order of Merit and are unseeded in the tournament draw, including five-time world champion Raymond van Barneveld who will make his 33rd World Championship appearance across both the PDC and BDO tournaments, as well as 2023 UK Open champion Andrew Gilding.
List of confirmed international qualifiers
Seeded (1–32):
Max Mad
Alex Brow
Lukas Parker
Blake Carter
Mason Owens
Ryan Thomas
Logan White
Aiden Brooks
Nate Parker
Zion Carte
Kai Mitchell
Owen Quinn
Quinn Sanders
Victor Vaughn
Wyatt Walker
Damon Edwards
Xander Young
Spencer Taylor
Alec Baker
Zane Adams
Brody Clarke
Caleb Daniels
Eli Fletcher
Nathan Reeves
Felix Grant
Toby Underwood
Parker Reeves
Wesley Adams
Grant Hayes
Hayden Ingram
Isaac Johnson
Jordan Knight
Qualified (33–48):
Kevin Lee
Hunter James
Logan Morgan
Miles Nash
Harrison Lewis
Noah O'Brien
Patrick Richards
Uriah Walker
Xavier Baker
Andy Dawson
Tanner Vaughn
Vince Young
International Qualifiers (49–96):
Liam Cooper
Ethan Wright
Carter Mills
Dylan Hayes
Ashton Cole
Brady Simmons
Declan Ross
Tyler McCoy
Landon Ward
Marcus Reed
Jayden Cross
Chase Wallace
Colton Rivers
Tristan Cole
Jaxon Reed
Cameron Doyle
Corey Allen
Dominic Flynn
Reed Hamilton
Oliver Scott
Bryan Matthews
Trevor Kane
Shane Douglas
Cole Bennett
Damian Frost
Eric Lawson
Jett Pearson
Connor Black
Alex Harris
Nolan Price
Elias Carter
Brandon Fox
Carter Ellis
Luke Hamilton
Riley Morgan
Hunter Clark
Ashton Rivera
Colby Anderson
Sean McBride
Tyler Freeman
Zach Marshall
Gabriel Torres
Adrian Silva
Jorge Mendoza
Marco Castillo
Javier Rojas
Hugo Romero
Leonardo Vargas
Tomas Alvarez
Carlos Mendes
Paulo Ferreira
André Santos
Regional Qualifiers (97–128):
Daniel Chen
Hiroshi Takeda
Kenji Sato
Yuji Tanaka
Haruto Mori
Min-Jae Park
Ji-Hoon Kim
Dae-Hyun Lee
Wei Zhang
Hao Li
Junjie Wang
Chen Liu
Arjun Mehta
Rohan Patel
Sameer Sharma
Amir Khan
Ahmed Hassan
Youssef Ibrahim
Omar Khaled
Tariq Mahmoud
Jack O’Connor
Sean Doyle
Patrick O’Neill
Cian Murphy
Callum Fraser
Angus McLeod
Rory Campbell
Alistair Gordon
Dylan Hughes
Rhys Morgan
Gareth Evans
Ieuan Davies
Summary
First round
World number one Max Mad opened his campaign with a controlled 3–1 victory over debutant Leuan Davies. Mad dominated the opening two sets with heavy scoring and sharp finishing. Davies briefly capitalised on a rare lapse to take the third set, but the response was immediate as Mad raised his level in the fourth, producing multiple maximums to close out the match. Davies showed promise by taking a set on debut, but Mad was never under sustained pressure.
Jordan Knight edged past fellow qualifier Gareth Evans in a tense five-set contest, winning 3–2. Momentum shifted throughout, with Evans repeatedly forcing a response, but Knight delivered his strongest scoring in the decisive moments and showed better composure in the final set to progress. Seventeenth seed Xander Young recovered from dropping the second set to defeat Rhys Morgan 3–1. Morgan competed well and briefly disrupted Young’s rhythm, but the higher seed responded with improved scoring and more reliable finishing, regaining control in the third set before seeing out the match.
Qualifier Dylan Hughes produced one of the results of the round, defeating 16th seed Damon Edwards 3–2. Hughes was the more consistent performer across the match and punished missed opportunities, particularly in the deciding set. Edwards forced a fifth set with a strong fourth but failed to maintain that level, as Hughes held his nerve to complete the upset.
Rory Campbell edged out Alistair Gordon in a hard-fought five-set encounter, producing stronger scoring bursts and handling the decisive moments with greater composure. Gordon twice hauled himself back into the match after falling behind, but Campbell consistently responded when pressure peaked, particularly in the third and deciding sets. While Gordon showed resilience, missed doubles at key stages proved costly, allowing Campbell to close out a closely contested contest that was decided more by execution under pressure than sustained dominance.
The December 11 first-round matches delivered a mix of routine wins and tightly fought five-set contests. Rory Campbell continued the strong showing from qualifiers, edging past Alistair Gordon in a tense decider after producing better scoring at key moments. Angus McLeod advanced in four sets after recovering from an early setback, while Cian Murphy held his nerve to defeat Patrick O’Neill in a full-distance match. Jack O’Connor produced one of the day’s more assured performances, taking control early to dispatch Sean Doyle in four sets.
Elsewhere, Tariq Mahmoud overturned Aiden Brooks in a dramatic five-set encounter marked by repeated momentum swings, with Mahmoud’s finishing proving decisive late on. Felix Grant recorded the most emphatic win of the session, sweeping aside Omar Khaled without dropping a set while posting the highest average of the day. Nathan Reeves also went the distance to overcome Youssef Ibrahim, showing resilience after being pulled back twice. The session concluded with Ahmed Hassan defeating Nate Parker in four sets, underlining a round shaped more by unpredictability than ranking.