Joe Hunt Clinches Tour Card as Archie Self Wins at 16

Archie Self wins Event 21 with a 104.49 average

Self met Tommy Morris in the first final of the day and won it 5-1, averaging 104.49 to Morris’s 98.13 and hitting five of his seven attempts at a double. Morris levelled at 1-1 and then did not win another leg. Self closed with finishes in 13, 12 and 13 darts, which is the sort of end to a match that makes the scoreline look less competitive than the averages suggest it was.

It is his second Challenge Tour title of 2026. The first came in Event 18 at Milton Keynes in August, when he beat Daniel Klose 5-4 in a deciding leg, and we covered that weekend at the time in our report on Events 18 to 20. Self, who is from Thatcham in Berkshire, also won the boys’ title at the WDF World Championship, so a teenager beating a field of adult professionals is no longer the surprise it was in August.

The route there was not straightforward. He came through a quarter-final against Jack Aldridge 5-4 and then beat Klose 5-2 in a semi-final where neither man got above 86. The final was a different performance entirely.

Morris, meanwhile, had beaten Joe Hunt 5-3 in the other semi-final, averaging 104.26 against Hunt’s 101.51 — comfortably the best match of the day on combined averages, and a reminder that the second semi-final is often where the tournament is actually decided.

Joe Hunt wins Event 22 and takes the lead back

Hunt turned round from that defeat to win the evening event, beating Callum Francis 5-3 in the final. Francis had the better average, 94.37 to 93.68, and led 3-2. Hunt took the last three legs without reply. It is a scoreline that fits the pattern of his day: he also survived 5-4 against Jake Jones in the last 16 and 5-4 against Harry Ward in a scrappy semi-final in which neither player averaged 86.

That is Hunt’s fourth Challenge Tour title of 2026, after Events 2 and 3 in Milton Keynes in January and Event 14 in Hildesheim in May. The £3,000 for the win, added to the £1,000 for his Event 21 semi-final, gave him £4,000 for the day.

Coulson had £350, from one run to the last 16 of Event 22 that included a 5-4 win over Patrick Geeraets. He took nothing at all out of Event 21. A £2,100 lead became a £1,550 deficit in the space of a Saturday.

How much each contender actually earned on Saturday

The Challenge Tour pays £3,000 to a winner, £2,000 to a runner-up, £1,000 to a semi-finalist and then £750, £350, £250 and £100 down to the last 64. Every movement in the table below is a legal combination of those figures across two events, which is a useful check on the numbers: set the new standings against the pre-Wigan table we published on Saturday morning and all twenty rows reconcile exactly.

Why Joe Hunt cannot now miss out on a Tour Card

On Saturday morning the honest summary of this race was that nobody was safe and nobody was out. Twelve thousand pounds was still available and the entire top 16 was within reach of the lead. Two events later the picture has hardened, because the ceiling has halved to £6,000 and Hunt has put £17,050 on the board.

Work through who can pass him. Coulson needs £1,551 and will probably get it. Klose, on £11,900, needs £5,151 — and the best two-event return short of winning both is a title plus a runner-up finish, which is £5,000. He is £151 short of that, so he must win both Events 23 and 24. Morris, on £11,350, needs £5,701, so he must win both as well. Self, on £9,400, needs £7,651 and cannot get there at all; neither can anyone below him.

Two events, one winner each. Klose and Morris cannot both win both. So at most two players — Coulson, plus one of that pair — can finish above Hunt, which puts him first or second whatever happens on Sunday. The top two on the final Order of Merit who do not already hold a card take a two-year PDC Tour Card covering 2027 and 2028, and the Challenge Tour is by definition a field of players without one. Hunt has his, and he has it a day early.

Archie Self is £100 short

The other side of the same arithmetic is harsher. Self won a Challenge Tour event on Saturday with the best average anyone managed all day, and it moved him from ninth to fifth. It also, on the same evening, ended his Tour Card season.

He stands on £9,400. Winning both events on Sunday is worth £6,000, which takes him to £15,400. Coulson is on £15,500 and prize money does not go down. Self therefore finishes below Coulson no matter what either man does, and with Hunt already clear of them both, second place is gone. The margin is £100 — the value of one last-64 defeat, the smallest cheque the tour pays. A single extra win in a first round in January or a Tuesday in May, at any point across 22 events, and he would still be in it.

He is not finished with the weekend, though. Three World Championship places go to the leading three who have not qualified by another route, and £15,400 would clear Klose and Morris comfortably if either has a poor Sunday. Self can still be at Alexandra Palace in December. He just cannot be a Tour Card holder in January.

The second card is a three-way fight

That leaves Coulson, Klose and Morris for the card behind Hunt, and the gaps are small enough that the prize ladder decides them rather than form. The figures below are what each chaser needs to pass Coulson’s current £15,500, which is the floor rather than the target: Coulson plays both events too and every pound he adds moves the line.

Klose is the best placed of the three because a title plus a quarter-final gets him there, and he has already won two events this year. Morris needs a title and a final in the same afternoon, having not won a single event in 2026 — Saturday was his first final of the season, and he lost it. The £150 that separates a title-plus-semi-final from the line is the sort of detail that decides careers on this tour: £11,350 plus £4,000 is £15,350, which is not enough.

Coulson’s position is odd. He is 58, he has spent the season grinding out last-16 and quarter-final money rather than winning trophies, and that profile is exactly what built his lead in the first place. It is also what deserted him on Saturday, when a format of four events in two days rewarded the players capable of a hot afternoon. He is not mathematically safe for a World Championship place either: if Hunt, Klose and Morris all finish above him, he drops to fourth.

Where the World Championship cut now falls

The three Ally Pally places are less settled, because the elimination line sits much lower. To have any chance of a top-three finish a player must be able to exceed Klose’s £11,900, since Hunt, Coulson and Klose cannot go backwards. With £6,000 available that means being on £5,901 or more today.

Thirteen players clear it, the last of them Nathan Potter and Jack Tweddell on £6,050. Christopher Wickenden, on £5,900, can win both events and finish level with Klose’s current total but not above it. Martijn Dragt in 15th on £5,800 — who reached the Event 21 quarter-finals and was the best of the Dutch contingent in that event — is out, and so is everyone below him. A week ago that line did not exist at all.

Sunday

Events 23 and 24 are played at Robin Park on Sunday, an open draw with no seeds and best-of-nine legs from the first round to the final. The Challenge Tour is not televised, so it plays out on live scoring, and the 2026 Order of Merit is final the moment the Event 24 final ends.

Event 21’s semi-finals are worth remembering when the draw comes out: the four players left in it were the men now first, third, fourth and fifth on the Order of Merit. The only one of the top five missing was Coulson, who by that stage of the afternoon had already gone out. Every other route into the 128-player field at Alexandra Palace is set out in our guide to World Championship qualification.