European Open Darts 2027: PDC Adds a 12th Major

What is the European Open?

A three-day major in Salzburg, 18–20 June 2027, worth £750,000, with entry open to every player holding a PDC Tour Card. Sky Sports and the Weekly Dartscast both describe it as a ranking event. The PDC has not published the format, and dartsnews.com reports it is expected to resemble the UK Open, so treat the structure as unconfirmed until the schedule appears.

The field is the part worth dwelling on, because it is unusual. Almost every major filters its entrants: the World Matchplay takes the top 16 plus 16, the Players Championship Finals the top 64 of the ProTour Order of Merit, the European Championship the top 32 of a one-year table. The UK Open is the exception — all 128 Tour Card holders are in, regardless of form or ranking. The European Open becomes the second tournament built on that principle, which is a meaningful change for the 90-odd professionals who never see the inside of a televised major.

That was more or less the stated intent. Talking to the Weekly Dartscast in July, before the venue or the name were public, PDC chief executive Matt Porter said the thinking was to “look away from just the top eight, 10 or 12 players and say what are the opportunities that are there for the rest of the tour card holders”. He also flagged the calendar problem the event solves: “A lot of the major ranking events are towards the second half of the year.”

Where the new major sits in the 2027 calendar

June is the answer to Porter’s complaint. The European Open lands the week after the World Cup of Darts in Frankfurt, which means two majors on the continent inside nine days and a chunk of summer that previously held one.

The European Championship goes to 48

Dortmund is the other significant change, and it is a bigger one than the headlines suggested. The European Championship moves from 32 players to 48, from four days to six, and to a £1,000,000 prize fund, running at the Westfalenhalle from 26–31 October 2027.

Put those numbers next to the Grand Slam of Darts, which made exactly the same jump twelve months earlier, and the PDC’s template is obvious. Two majors, two consecutive announcements, identical destination.

What 48 places would have done to this year’s race

The 2027 field will be settled by the 2027 European Tour Order of Merit, so nothing below transfers directly. But the current season gives a usable sense of scale, because we have been tracking the race to Dortmund all autumn and the bottom of that table is unusually tight.

After 13 of the 15 European Tour events, Stephen Bunting held the 32nd and final place on £33,000. Sixteen places further down, Madars Razma sat on £16,000. Extend the field to 48 and every single player in that stretch is in, with eight more places still to give away below Razma — so the qualifying line, £33,000 this season, would fall somewhere under £16,000. That is less a widened door than a different door.

Two names in that list make the point sharper than the rest. Michael Smith and Daryl Gurney are level on £22,000 in 36th and 37th, £11,000 adrift, and only one of them came through Thursday’s qualifier in Den Bosch to give himself a chance of closing it. A former world champion and a former Grand Slam winner are fighting over a cut-off that, from 2027, will not exist at that height.

France joins the European Tour

The third change is geographic. The European Tour stages an event in Lièvin, in the Pas-de-Calais, from 19–21 March 2027 — the circuit’s first visit to France after recent debuts in Poland and Slovakia. The 2027 tour opens in Kiel from 12–14 February. Below the main circuit, the Challenge Tour and Development Tour move to six three-day weekends apiece, with prize money reported at £30,000 per event and paid down to the last 128.

What it means for the players at the top

A twelfth major is a twelfth thing to win, which matters most to the one player currently trying to win all of them. Luke Littler spent 2026 chasing a clean sweep of the televised majors until Jonny Clayton beat him 10-4 in Amsterdam. Nobody has swept every major inside one calendar year even at eleven, as our running account of the 2026 attempt sets out. From next year the target is one tournament longer.

There is an awkward footnote too. The expansion is almost entirely into German-speaking Europe — Frankfurt, Salzburg, a six-day Dortmund — at a moment when Littler has pulled out of three Dutch events over crowd treatment and has not entered a German European Tour event since 2025. The PDC’s growth plan and its biggest draw are pointing in different directions on the continent, and 2027 gives that tension more dates, not fewer.

Porter’s own framing was straightforwardly expansionist: “The continued growth of darts across Europe has been hugely exciting to see, and these developments represent another significant step forward for the PDC circuit.” Prize breakdowns, qualification routes and the European Open’s format all follow in their own time. The dates are the part you can plan around, and the 2026 calendar still has a World Grand Prix, a Grand Slam and an Alexandra Palace to get through first.