Bahrain Darts Masters 2027: Dates and Venue Confirmed

When is the Bahrain Darts Masters 2027?

Thursday 14 and Friday 15 January. The PDC confirmed the dates on 23 October and tickets went on sale alongside the announcement, with booking through the Bahrain International Circuit. DartsNews reported that regional tensions had left the 2027 staging in some doubt before the confirmation came.

Those dates matter more than a two-day exhibition in the Gulf might suggest. The World Championship finishes at Alexandra Palace on 3 January, and whoever lifts the Sid Waddell Trophy gets eleven days before the sport puts a stage back up. Bahrain is where the hangover ends and the ranking year that follows begins to take shape, which is why the field is usually drawn from the very top of the PDC Order of Merit.

Where is it played?

Terminal 4 by Beyon, the hall at Exhibition World Bahrain in Sakhir that took over as the venue for the 2026 staging when the event outgrew its earlier home. The tournament is promoted by Bahrain International Circuit with CBX, backed by the Bahrain Tourism and Exhibitions Authority. The Gulf Daily News reports two-day grandstand tickets from BD16 and premium table seating from BD32 after a limited early-bird discount.

How the 16-player field works

Sixteen players, straight knockout. The eight first-round ties fill day one; the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final are all played on day two. The split is the World Series template — eight PDC names against eight players representing the host region — so every opening tie pits a PDC player against an Asian representative. The final is played over the best of 15 legs, the semi-finals the best of 13.

The 2027 line-up has not been named — the PDC will reveal the eight invited players and their opponents later. Here is how the eight Asian places were filled last January, which is the pattern to expect.

Two of those places are reserved for Bahraini players who come through a national qualifier staged the month before the tournament, which is how Abdulla Saeed and Basem Mahmood have reached the stage in consecutive years. The rest come from the Asian circuit, including the winner of the PDC Asian Tour Order of Merit.

Four stagings, four different champions

Four stagings have produced four winners and nobody has defended the title. Van Gerwen lost the 2024 final before finally taking the trophy in 2026.

Price is the hard-luck story. He has lost two finals here, to Michael Smith in 2023 and Bunting in 2025, and has nothing to show for four visits. What he does have is a habit of ending Littler’s week: 6-2 in the quarter-finals in 2025, then 6-2 again at the same stage in 2026. The 2025 win came with an average of 115.31, which the event records list as the highest in Bahrain Darts Masters history — the best darts thrown here belong to a man who has never won the thing.

The event that launched Luke Littler

Bahrain has a decent claim to being the most consequential two days of Luke Littler’s career outside Ally Pally. In January 2024, three weeks after the World Championship run that made him famous, he arrived for his World Series debut and won the thing — beating Man Lok Leung, Nathan Aspinall, Gerwyn Price and then Michael van Gerwen 8-5 in the final for his first PDC senior title.

The leg people remember came first. Opening his quarter-final against Aspinall on 19 January, two days before his 17th birthday, Littler threw two 180s and took out 141 on double 12 — a nine-dart finish that made him the youngest player to hit one on television, taking a record Van Gerwen had held at 17 years and 298 days. It was only the second nine-darter in World Series history, after Phil Taylor.

He has been back twice without adding a second title, and Price has stopped him both times. The 2026 defeat carried more weight than the scoreline: it ended a 21-match winning run that Littler had carried out of Alexandra Palace as a two-time world champion.

Has an Asian representative ever beaten a PDC player?

Once memorably. Paolo Nebrida of the Philippines opened the 2025 tournament by beating Rob Cross 6-3, the first time a Filipino had won a match on the World Series of Darts, and he went on to reach the quarter-finals. Sky Sports and Darts World both credited his finishing, including a 116 checkout, against a Cross who could not find the doubles.

It remains the exception. In 2026 all eight PDC representatives won their opening tie, with Van Gerwen pushed hardest by Asian Tour Order of Merit winner Alexis Toylo. The eight-against-eight format is designed to give the region a stage rather than a level contest, and the scorelines reflect that most years.

Prize money

The 2027 fund has not been published. The 2026 event paid out £100,000 in total, itself an increase on earlier stagings, with £30,000 to the champion. It is modest money by major standards — the European Championshippaid its winner £150,000 this month — and none of it moves the rankings, because World Series events are invitational and non-ranking.

What is still to be announced

The sixteen players, the draw and the prize fund. The PDC has said the invited eight and their Asian opponents will be confirmed closer to the event; last year the field was announced on 7 January, eight days before the first round. Everything before then depends on Alexandra Palace, because the top of the Order of Merit in mid-January will not be quite the table that exists today.

The rest of the 2027 World Series calendar has yet to be filled in behind Bahrain. For now the immediate business is domestic — the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton, then Ally Pally. Our 2026 calendar has the run-in, and the World Series of Darts Finals report covers how the 2026 series ended.