The reserve who was never supposed to be there
Gurney did not qualify for this tournament. The 32-man field was settled weeks ago and his name was on the reserve list. Then Lourence Ilagan and Alexis Toylo were left without decisions on their Schengen visa applications before they had to fly to China for the closing weekend of the PDC Asian Tour, and both withdrew. Under the PDC’s replacement rules their places went to the two highest-ranked reserves from August’s Tour Card Holder Qualifier: Gurney and Maik Kuivenhoven.
Ilagan’s slot in the draw came with Van Gerwen attached to it. When the bracket was published the opening night looked like a formality for the Dutchman, who has appeared in every staging of this event since it began in 2015 and won six of them.
How Gurney won it
Gurney took the first three legs, finishing the third with a 170 checkout — the biggest three-dart finish available on a dartboard. Van Gerwen had barely had a dart at a double.
Then the match turned the way these matches normally turn. Five legs in a row put Van Gerwen 5-3 up and one leg from the second round. Gurney held to make it 5-4, and in the tenth leg Van Gerwen had match darts and missed them. That was the match: Gurney took the leg, forced a decider, and landed double 16 to quieten the AFAS Live crowd.
It is not the first substantial thing Gurney has taken off Van Gerwen. His second major title, the 2018 Players Championship Finals, came from 9-8 down in the final against the same opponent and ended a long Van Gerwen winning streak at Minehead. His first was the 2017 World Grand Prix, won 5-4 against Simon Whitlock in Dublin.
Thursday’s full first-round results
Eight of the sixteen first-round ties were played on the opening night, all over the best of 11 legs. Two went to a deciding leg, and both were won by the player who had been behind.
| Winner | Score | Beaten by | Round two |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daryl Gurney | 6-5 | Michael van Gerwen | Ross Smith |
| Ross Smith | 6-3 | Kevin Doets | Daryl Gurney |
| Luke Humphries | 6-4 | Jermaine Wattimena | Dirk van Duijvenbode |
| Dirk van Duijvenbode | 6-4 | Viktor Tingström | Luke Humphries |
| Josh Rock | 6-5 | Stephen Bunting | Ryan Searle |
| Ryan Searle | 6-2 | Rob Cross | Josh Rock |
| Gian van Veen | 6-2 | Chris Dobey | Karel Sedláček |
| Karel Sedláček | 6-4 | Ben Robb | Gian van Veen |
The other decider went to Josh Rock, who trailed Stephen Bunting 5-3 before winning the last three legs, Bunting having had darts to finish it. Dirk van Duijvenbodepulled off the night’s other recovery, going 4-1 down to Viktor Tingström and then taking five legs in a row.
Luke Humphries beat Jermaine Wattimena 6-4 but needed several visits at the winning double to get there. Ross Smith, who tops the European Tour Order of Merit, saw off Dutch qualifier Kevin Doets 6-3 and now gets Gurney. Ryan Searle put out 2018 world champion Rob Cross 6-2, Karel Sedláček beat New Zealand’s Ben Robb 6-4, and Gian van Veen was the most comfortable winner of the night, 6-2 against Chris Dobey.
Half the draw now has no champion in it
Van Gerwen was the only previous winner of this event in Thursday’s half of the bracket, so his exit has an effect well beyond one match. Gurney, Ross Smith, Humphries, Van Duijvenbode, Rock, Searle, Van Veen and Sedláček are the eight still standing from that side, and not one of them has lifted the trophy. Whoever comes out of it will be a first-time World Series of Darts Finals finalist.
One of those CVs has an obvious hole in it. Humphries has won the World Championship, the World Matchplay, the Premier League and the Grand Slam of Darts, and he is the biggest name missing from an eleven-year roll of honour that runs to only five men. On paper this is the softest route to it he is likely to be handed.
Van Gerwen’s record stops at six
Van Gerwen has owned this tournament in a way he has owned few others. Six of the eleven stagings before this year went to him — 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2023 and 2025 — and the most recent came only last September, an 11-7 win over Luke Littler that ended a two-year wait for a televised title. A seventh in Amsterdam would have taken him further clear of a field in which nobody else has more than two.
Source: PDC roll of honour, via Darts World
Instead he leaves with £5,000, the first-round fee from a £450,000 fund that pays £100,000 to the champion. The full ladder is set out in our guide to how the field qualified.
Friday completes round one
The remaining eight first-round ties are played on Friday evening, and this is the half of the draw that carries the tournament’s heaviest names. Kuivenhoven, the other reserve-list call-up, inherited Toylo’s place and with it a tie against a former champion.
| Player | Opponent |
|---|---|
| Luke Littler | Danny Noppert |
| Gerwyn Price | Brody Klinge |
| Jonny Clayton | Maik Kuivenhoven |
| James Wade | Damon Heta |
| Nathan Aspinall | Raymond Smith |
| Wessel Nijman | Simon Whitlock |
| Callan Rydz | Motomu Sakai |
| Jim Long | Adam Leek |
World number one Luke Littler faces Danny Noppert, Gerwyn Price plays Brody Klinge, and Jonny Clayton meets Kuivenhoven. With Van Gerwen out, every remaining former champion is in this session: Littler won it in 2024, Price in 2020 and 2022, Clayton in 2021, and James Wade — drawn against Damon Heta — in 2018. Where they all stand on the season-long circuit is tracked in our World Series Order of Merit breakdown.
What happens next
Round two fills both Saturday sessions, still over the best of 11 legs, with Gurney against Ross Smith among the afternoon’s ties. The quarter-finals, semi-finals and final are all played on Sunday 20 September, the legs lengthening as the day goes on.
Beyond Amsterdam, the season moves straight to Leicester for the World Grand Prix, which starts on 28 September. The rest of the run-in is laid out on our 2026 calendar, and every result feeds the live PDC Order of Merit.