The highest average in Dortmund so far
The number that matters is 105.05. Nothing thrown at the Westfalenhalle across the two first-round nights has matched it — not Luke Woodhouse’s nine-darter match, which came in at 99.11, and not Kim Huybrechts’ 103.81on Thursday, the figure that had stood as the week’s best for twenty-four hours.
O’Connor did not play badly. The 22nd seed averaged 97.28, which on most nights of darts wins a first-round match comfortably, and he still went out by three legs. That is the shape of Littler’s win: not a collapse at the other end of the oche, just a scoring level the Irishman had no answer to over eleven legs.
Littler came into the week short of silverware by his own standards. He went out in the first round of the World Grand Prix, which Luke Humphries went on to win, and he did not take the World Series of Darts Finals in Amsterdam either. The European Championship is the gap in the trophy cabinet: a last-16 exit in 2025 is still his best run at it.
Friday’s round-one results
Littler was fifth on the Friday card, in a session that completed the 32-player first round begun on Thursday. Five results were in late in the evening; the last three ties were still to be reported when this went up.
| Winner | Loser | Legs | Avg W | Avg L |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luke Littler (11) | William O’Connor (22) | 6-3 | 105.05 | 97.28 |
| Jonny Clayton (6) | Niko Springer (27) | 6-3 | 96.81 | 95.76 |
| Nathan Aspinall (12) | Cristo Reyes (21) | 6-3 | 92.92 | 95.30 |
| Krzysztof Ratajski (3) | Dave Chisnall (30) | 6-2 | 91.21 | 87.90 |
| Jermaine Wattimena (18) | Ryan Joyce (15) | 6-3 | — | — |
Dave Chisnall was the seed who went out most heavily, beaten 6-2 by Krzysztof Ratajski, the third seed, with both men under 92. Jonny Clayton had the tighter contest the scoreline hides: he and German qualifier Niko Springer were separated by barely a point of average, 96.81 to 95.76, and Clayton won by three legs anyway.
Half of Dortmund’s ten best averages belong to men who lost
Put the two nights together and the first round has been unusually cruel to accurate scoring. Of the ten highest three-dart averages posted in Dortmund, five came from players who are out of the tournament.
Red bars are players who lost. Bars scaled from a baseline of 85. Covers both first-round nights, using only the averages DartsNews and a second outlet (dartn.de on Thursday, dartsnieuws.com on Friday) report identically; the Smith–Sedlacek and Joyce–Wattimena figures are excluded because outlets disagree on them, and all four of those averages fall below this top ten. Source: DartsNews, dartn.de and dartsnieuws.com match data.
Ryan Searle set the pattern on Thursday, averaging 98.59 against Huybrechts and winning one leg. O’Connor is next on the list, then James Wade, whose 96.48 lost a last-leg decider to Damon Heta. Springer and Cristo Reyes complete the five, and Reyes is the odd case of the week: his 95.30 was higher than Aspinall’s 92.92 and he lost 6-3. If you want the arithmetic behind figures like these, our guide to the three-dart average explains what separates a 95 from a 105.
Littler meets Aspinall in the last 16
Both halves of that tie came through on Friday, so the second-round match is confirmed: Littler against Aspinall in Saturday’s evening session, which starts at 19:00 local time, over the best of 19 legs rather than the best of 11. The eight-leg jump is the sharpest format change in the tournament, and the European Championship format guide sets out how the rest of the bracket scales.
The two last met at the World Series of Darts Finals in Amsterdam, where Littler edged a 10-9 last-leg decider in the match that turned into the whistling row — the referee stopped play mid-match at Aspinall’s request to ask the crowd to stop. Littler’s response to that fortnight was to pull out of three Dutch European Tour events, a stance set out in full in our piece on his Netherlands boycott, and Germany was the precedent for it: he has not entered a European Tour event there since 2025. The major itself he has never skipped, and Dortmund is where that question gets asked loudest.
Still on the board
Three Friday ties were unreported late in the session, and two of them carry weight. Michael van Gerwen faced fellow Dutchman Kevin Doets, the all-Dutch tie the previews kept coming back to; Martin Schindler, the home seed who escaped the £34,500 countback that decided the last places in this bracket, played Wessel Nijman; and Josh Rock met Chris Dobey. Their winners meet Ratajski, Jermaine Wattimena and Clayton respectively.
Saturday fills both sessions with the eight second-round matches, and Sunday carries the quarter-finals in the afternoon before the semi-finals and the final at night. The rest of the season is on the 2026 calendar, and where this week leaves the standings is on the live PDC Order of Merit.