How European Championship qualification works
The European Championship is the one PDC major that ignores the world rankings entirely. Entry is decided by the European Tour Order of Merit, a one-year table counting nothing but prize money banked at the season’s 15 European Tour events. Win nothing in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Hungary or the Netherlands and a world No.5 ranking is worth exactly £0 towards Dortmund.
That is why the table below looks so little like the two-year PDC Order of Merit. It rewards players who turn up on Friday nights in provincial German arenas and keep winning two or three matches, and it punishes anyone who skips the circuit or loses early on it.
Who leads the European Tour Order of Merit?
Smith’s £148,000 is built on two European Tour titles this season, the second of them the Hungarian Darts Trophy in August, topped up by the runner-up cheque from Antwerp when James Wade beat him 8-4 in the Flanders final. Wessel Nijman led this table for much of the summer and is still £32,000 adrift in second.
Source: PDC Europe, European Tour Order of Merit after ET13 (Flanders Darts Trophy).
The two biggest movers both came out of the last fortnight. Wade’s £35,000 for winning in Antwerp lifted him 22 places to ninth, from the edge of the qualifying places to comfortably inside them. Luke Littler climbed 16 places, from 20th, by winning the Czech Darts Open in Prague a week earlier, and now sits fifth.
Where is the cut-off for Dortmund?
Between 25th and 33rd there is £12,500. One quarter-final in Basel moves a player past four or five rivals; one early defeat drops them behind the same number. These are the positions worth watching over the next month.
| # | Player | Prize money |
|---|---|---|
| 25 | Niko Springer | £42,000 |
| 26 | Cameron Menzies | £37,000 |
| 27 | Dirk van Duijvenbode | £36,000 |
| 28 | Kim Huybrechts | £34,500 |
| 29 | Martin Schindler | £34,500 |
| 30 | Cristo Reyes | £34,000 |
| 31 | Dave Chisnall | £33,500 |
| 32 | Stephen Bunting | £33,000 |
| 33 | Joe Cullen | £29,500 |
| 34 | Sebastian Bialecki | £26,000 |
| 35 | Karel Sedlacek | £23,000 |
| 36 | Michael Smith | £22,000 |
| 37 | Daryl Gurney | £22,000 |
| 38 | Keane Barry | £19,500 |
| 39 | Ricky Evans | £19,000 |
| 40 | Madars Razma | £16,000 |
The red line marks the top-32 cut. Everyone below it currently misses Dortmund.
Bunting spent most of the run-in on the wrong side of that line. After ET12 he was 33rd on £28,000 with Joe Cullen holding the final place; a last-16 run in Antwerp was worth £5,000 and flipped the pair. Cullen has not added anything since and now needs a result of his own.
Which big names are outside the top 32?
Michael Smith is 36th on £22,000 and Daryl Gurney 37th on the same figure, both £11,000 behind Bunting. Neither gap is unbridgeable — a run to a final in Basel or Maastricht is worth £15,000 on its own — but both men have to actually qualify for the events first, and anything they win can be matched by the players immediately above them.
Higher up, the names that usually dominate this conversation are safe without being spectacular. Gian van Veen, the defending champion, is 13th on £61,000. Luke Humphries is 14th on £60,000 after slipping out of the top 10 in Antwerp, and Michael van Gerwen dropped from 13th to 16th on £56,000. Martin Schindler, who would have the Westfalenhalle behind him, is 29th on £34,500 — inside, but by less than the price of a quarter-final.
What is still on offer in Basel and Maastricht
The Swiss Darts Trophy runs at the St. Jakobshalle in Basel from 9-11 October, and the Dutch Darts Championship closes the circuit at the MECC in Maastricht from 16-18 October. Each carries £230,000, a fund that rose by more than 30 per cent from £175,000 for 2026 and makes late charges far more plausible than they used to be.
| Stage reached | Prize |
|---|---|
| Winner | £35,000 |
| Runner-up | £15,000 |
| Semi-finalists | £10,000 |
| Quarter-finalists | £8,000 |
| Last 16 | £5,000 |
| Last 32 | £3,500 |
| Last 48 | £2,000 |
There is one rule that catches people out every autumn. The 16 seeds at a European Tour event skip the first round and come in at the last 32, and if they lose that opening match their prize money is not credited to any Order of Merit. A seeded player who goes out in their first game therefore leaves Basel with exactly what they arrived with. For someone like Bunting, defending a place rather than chasing one, that means two matches must be won before a single pound of protection arrives.
The arithmetic of the last two weekends
Two events means a theoretical maximum of £70,000 still in play for anyone who wins both, which is why nobody in the thirties should be written off and why several players in the twenties are less comfortable than their position suggests. The cut can only travel in one direction: £33,000 is a floor, not a forecast, because prize money is added and never removed.
What it takes in practice is modest and brutal at the same time. A player sitting on £29,500 needs £3,501 to pass 32nd as it stands, which a single quarter-final at £8,000 covers twice over — but the man in 32nd is playing the same weekend and can move the target. Reaching the last 16 at both Basel and Maastricht is worth £10,000 and would lift almost anyone in the table above into safety. Losing in the first round twice is worth £4,000 and changes very little.
When is the 2026 European Championship?
The tournament runs from 22-25 October at the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, where it has been staged since 2022. Van Veen arrives as champion after one of the better major finals of recent years: 11-10 against Humphries, two match darts missed at 10-9, and a third taken in the decider to make him the youngest European champion on record.
The final 32 will be known on the evening of Sunday 18 October. Until then the table moves twice more — you can follow it on the live European Championship race standings, or check the remaining fixtures on the 2026 calendar.