Jenson Walker Wins Malta Masters to Become WDF World No.1

What happened in Tarxien

Two WDF Category S — silver — ranking events ran back to back at Il Salone delle Rose on Triq il-Gudja in Tarxien over the weekend of 6–8 November: the Malta Masters on the Saturday, the Malta Open on the Sunday. They open the WDF’s 2026/27 ranking season, which is the detail that gives the weekend its weight.

Walker beat Davey Gradwell 4–2 in the Masters semi-final and then Fullwell 5–2 in a final in which both men sat in the mid-eighties, 84.85 to 83.63 on the WDF’s published figures. Darts World, reporting from the event, had Walker hitting two 180s and checkouts of 100, 111 and 113 along the way. It was also a defence: he won the same title in 2025.

Fullwell is the only player who reached the last four of both events, and the weekend gave him nothing for it. He lost Saturday’s Masters final to Walker and Sunday’s Open semi-final 4–1 to David Evans — both times to the man who went on to win the tournament.

Why the new world No.1 is still the second seed

Walker now has 858 points. Lawrie, the Scot who had held top spot, has 752 and has not played a WDF event since late August. Paul Krohne of Germany sits seven points behind Lawrie on 745, which makes second place in the live table a good deal less settled than the Lakeside seeding list suggests.

Part of the size of Walker’s jump is a quirk of the rolling ranking window rather than form. The Polish outlet Łączy Nas Dart points out that the 2025 Malta Masters fell a week later in that season’s calendar, so for the moment both of his Malta Masters titles sit inside his ranking total at once.

None of this reaches the seeding at Frimley Green. The WDF set the 2026 Lakeside field from the 2025/26 qualification race, published the 90-player field on 1 November and drew it on 3 November. That race had already closed when Walker threw his first dart in Tarxien. Lawrie is the top seed, Walker the second, and the only two positions the Malta weekend has swapped are the two at the top of a table that now governs the race to Lakeside 2027.

Lawrie beat Walker at Lakeside eleven months ago

The two have already played the match that matters most to both of them. In the semi-finals of the 2025 WDF World Championship, Lawrie — then 15 — beat Walker, then 19, 5–2 in sets. Walker took the opening set, which made him the first player to win a set off Lawrie in that tournament, and he led 2–0 in the sixth with the tie there to be levelled. Lawrie came back and closed it with a 125 finish, became the youngest finalist the championship has had, and lost the final 6–3 to Jimmy van Schie.

Van Schie is not at Frimley Green this year; he won a PDC Tour Card at Qualifying School in January and gave up the defence. Lawrie, who also won the WDF Europe Cup singlesin October, is top seed in both the Open and the Open Youth championships. Walker heads the other half of the Open draw, where Neil Duff — the 2022 champion and the only former winner in the field — is seeded 15th and sits in his last-16 slot. A rematch needs both of them to reach 6 December.

Ratajska beat three Lakeside players in two days. She is not going

The sharpest result of the weekend belongs to Karolina Ratajska, who won both ladies events. On Saturday she beat Irina Armstrong 5–0 in the Masters final, averaging 77.47 to Armstrong’s 53.81, having come through a 4–3 semi-final against Paula Jacklin from 3–3. On Sunday she beat Anca Zijlstra 5–4 in a deciding leg to take the Open as well. Darts World reported it as her first WDF ranking title in seven years; she now has two in two days.

Set those three names against the women’s draw for Lakeside and the weekend reads differently. Jacklin is the sixth seed there. Armstrong plays Chris Richardson in round one, Zijlstra plays Paula Murphy, and both ties sit inside the 24-player field that was settled on 1 November. Ratajska beat a seed and two more qualifiers inside 48 hours and is not in the tournament, because the race she has just re-entered the ranking through is the one for 2027. Deta Hedman, who won the 2025 title at 66 as the oldest world champion the sport has had, defends at Frimley Green.

Evans wins his first title, 5–0 against a World Open champion

Sunday’s Open final was the most one-sided of the four senior finals. David Evans beat Cliff Prior 5–0, averaging 91.65 to Prior’s 83.96, and on the WDF’s own numbers his 98.80 in the semi-final against Fullwell was the best average anyone produced in either event. Darts World reported it as his first WDF title.

Prior is not a routine runner-up. He won the WDF World Open in Budapest in October 2025, coming from 4–2 down to beat Haruki Muramatsu 5–4 for €5,600 while ranked 54th in the world. In Tarxien he beat Robin Radloff 4–0 in the semi-final and then lost a final without taking a leg.

In the youth event, Darts World reported that Thomas Sammut retained the Masters title, beating Luke Cox 5–3 and bookending the final with 17-darters.

One name worth separating

There are two Walkers winning WDF titles in England this autumn and they are not related to each other’s story. Jenson Walker is the senior world number one. Jayden Walkeris the 14-year-old who beat Aaron Turner 5–2 at the England International Open in Selsey in October to become the youngest winner of a senior WDF ranking title. Different players, different events, one surname.

What it sets up

Lakeside runs from 27 November to 6 December, and the ranking Walker now leads has no say in it. What his weekend buys is the opening position in the 2026/27 race — the one that decides who is seeded at Frimley Green a year from now, and which has only just opened. For readers new to the split between the two circuits, our explainer on the PDC and the WDF covers why a world number one in one of them can be an unknown in the other.

The full fixture list for the rest of the season, PDC and WDF, is on our darts calendar.