The full 2026 Grand Slam of Darts draw
One seed per group, drawn in bracket order from A to P. The 2026 Mr Vegas Grand Slam of Darts runs from 14 to 22 November at WV Active Aldersley in Wolverhampton.
| Group | Seed | Also in the group |
|---|---|---|
| A | Luke Littler (1) | Niels Zonneveld, Beau Greaves |
| B | Jermaine Wattimena (16) | Alan Soutar, Lisa Ashton |
| C | Josh Rock (8) | Kevin Doets, Tommy Morris |
| D | Stephen Bunting (9) | Cameron Menzies, Raymond Smith |
| E | Gerwyn Price (4) | Sebastian Bialecki, Joe Hunt |
| F | Ryan Searle (13) | Andrew Gilding, Charlie Manby |
| G | Jonny Clayton (5) | Rob Cross, Anton Östlund |
| H | Wessel Nijman (12) | Niko Springer, Adam Sevada |
| I | Luke Humphries (2) | Joe Cullen, Paolo Nebrida |
| J | Luke Woodhouse (15) | Krzysztof Ratajski, Tom Sykes |
| K | James Wade (7) | Ricky Evans, Cam Crabtree |
| L | Michael van Gerwen (10) | Jeffrey de Graaf, Henry Coates |
| M | Gian van Veen (3) | Bradley Brooks, Carl Sneyd |
| N | Chris Dobey (14) | Martin Schindler, Jan Schmidt |
| O | Ross Smith (6) | Gabriel Clemens, Rusty-Jake Rodriguez |
| P | Nathan Aspinall (11) | Karel Sedlacek, Maik Kuivenhoven |
Littler, Greaves and Zonneveld: inside Group A
Littler won this title in 2024 and again in 2025, and he is chasing a third in a row. His reward for being the number one seed is a group containing the first woman to win a match on the PDC European Tour and a first-time ranking champion. Zonneveld came from 2-0 down to beat Danny Noppert 8-5 and win the Dutch Darts Championship in Maastricht last month, which is both his first PDC title and the reason he is here at all. It is his Grand Slam debut.
Greaves gets Littler first. The PDC has that match in the opening session on Saturday 14 November, with Zonneveld waiting to play both of them across the Sunday and Monday; the session-by-session running order had not been published when the draw was announced. Greaves has already beaten Daryl Gurney 6-4 in Prague this year for the first European Tour match win by a woman, so the novelty of a mixed group has worn off a good deal faster than the difficulty of one.
What makes the group severe is not the names, it is the arithmetic. Each player gets two matches, best of nine legs, and one of the three goes through. A player who loses their opener is not merely behind, they are nearly out: beat the other opponent and they can still be sent out on leg difference by a result they have no part in.
Source: PDC published format and schedule for the 2026 Mr Vegas Grand Slam of Darts.
The draw settles the last-32 question
When we went through the new 48-player formatin September we flagged one thing as unconfirmed: whether the knockout stage would begin at a last 32 or a last 16. The prize ladder listed a payment for second place in a group and then jumped straight to a last-16 tier, which only balanced to the £1,000,000 headline if 16 group winners went straight into a last 16. Previews elsewhere were still describing a last 32.
The schedule released with the draw closes it. The knockout stage starts on Wednesday 18 November at the last 16, the group stage takes the first four days, and the quarter-finals are on 20 and 21 November before the final on Sunday 22 November. Sixteen group winners, no last 32, and 32 of the 48 players home before the bracket begins.
Where the Leicester ten landed
The last ten places were won three days before the draw, at the Tour Card Holder Qualifier in Leicester, where 91 players chased them. We tracked all ten results in that qualifier, and the draw has now scattered them across the groups — with one exception.
| Player | Group | Drawn against |
|---|---|---|
| Stephen Bunting | D | Seeded 9th |
| Joe Cullen | I | With the second seed, Humphries |
| Niko Springer | H | With the 12th seed, Nijman |
| Bradley Brooks | M | With the third seed, van Veen |
| Carl Sneyd | M | With the third seed, van Veen |
| Ricky Evans | K | With the seventh seed, Wade |
| Alan Soutar | B | With the 16th seed, Wattimena |
| Maik Kuivenhoven | P | With the 11th seed, Aspinall |
| Tom Sykes | J | With the 15th seed, Woodhouse |
| Rusty-Jake Rodriguez | O | With the sixth seed, Ross Smith |
Group M is the only one of the 16 to be drawn with two Leicester graduates in it, which makes Gian van Veen the one seed whose entire group came through the Friday qualifier. Bradley Brooks got there by beating Dave Chisnall 5-2 and Carl Sneyd by beating Andy Boulton 5-2. The third seed therefore plays two men who were a leg or two from not being in the tournament, which in a one-from-three group is not the soft draw it looks like on paper.
Stephen Buntingis the oddity. He had to play in Leicester to get in, beating Jimmy van Schie 5-2, and he is still the ninth seed — because the Grand Slam gives out no places on ranking position but does use ranking position to seed the players who get in. A top-ten player with nothing to show for 2026 in the qualifying criteria ends up as a seed who arrived through the back door.
Who is not in the draw
Michael Smith, the 2022 champion, is absent: he led Joe Cullen 3-0 in Leicester and lost 5-3, and there is no second route. Chisnall, Mike De Decker and Cristo Reyes went the same way on the same night. Gary Anderson never got that far: he reached a European Tour final in Budapest and lost it 8-2 to Ross Smith, on a route where only the winner qualifies.
That is the Grand Slam doing what it has always done. It is the one PDC major that reserves nothing at all for the top of the Order of Merit, which is the subject of our full breakdown of how the 48 places were handed out.
At the other end of the draw sheet, Group C contains Tommy Morris, who had no Tour Card at all when he beat Luke Humphries in the Players Championship 34 final four days ago, and Group L contains Henry Coates, who did the same thing at Players Championship 25 in July. Both are now drawn against seeds. Morris gets Josh Rock and Kevin Doets; Coates gets Michael van Gerwen and Jeffrey de Graaf.
What happens next
The PDC still has to publish the full session-by-session schedule, including which groups play on which of the four group-stage days. After that the only thing left is the throwing — two matches per player, and 32 names coming off the board by Tuesday night.
The Grand Slam is a full ranking event, so the £200,000 first prize and everything below it lands on the two-year list with the World Championship seedings still to be settled. The rest of the season gives the losers in Wolverhampton only the Players Championship Finals at Minehead to put it right.