Why can’t the world number one qualify for Minehead?
Because the Players Championship Finals field ignores almost everything Littler has done this year. The 64 places are filled from the Players Championship Order of Merit, a one-year table built from prize money won at the 34 Players Championship floor events and nothing else. A World Championship, a Premier League, a World Matchplay — none of it registers. Only ProTour cheques do, as our guide to the PDC ProTour sets out.
Littler skipped the first 26 events of the series, turned up for two in Leicester in August, and skipped the six that followed. That is the whole story of his floor season.
Littler’s 2026 floor season was nine days long
He entered Players Championship 27 and 28 on consecutive days, and both runs ended one win short of something useful.
| Event | Date | Result | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| Players Championship 27, Leicester | 25 Aug | Lost quarter-final 5-6 to Jermaine Wattimena | £4,000 |
| Players Championship 28, Leicester | 26 Aug | Lost semi-final 4-7 to Brendan Dolan | £6,500 |
| The other 32 events | — | Did not enter | £0 |
| Total | £10,500 |
Jermaine Wattimena beat him 6-5 in the quarter-finals of the first event and went on to win it. A day later Brendan Dolan knocked him out 7-4 in the semi-finals of Players Championship 28, a tournament Luke Humphries eventually won. Quarter-final money is £4,000 and a semi-final pays £6,500, which is exactly how a world champion ends a season on £10,500.
Could he have qualified if he had entered Leicester?
Yes, and that is the part worth sitting with. A Players Championship title pays £15,000. Littler needed £21,250 to climb from £10,500 to the £31,750 that Wesley Plaisier was holding 64th place with after Players Championship 32. Two titles in two days would have cleared it comfortably; a title plus a semi-final would also have done the job.
It was a narrow, demanding route rather than an impossible one — win the lot, or very nearly. Littler has not said he was chasing it. When he withdrew from the Den Bosch events in September he was blunt about the travel and the reception he was getting in the Netherlands, and the Leicester double-header has simply followed the same pattern as the eight events before it.
Who is actually fighting for the last Minehead places?
The genuine race is happening a long way below Littler, and it is tight. Five hundred pounds separates the player in the last qualifying place from the player immediately outside it.
Provisional standings after Players Championship 32. Source: dartsrankings.com Players Championship Order of Merit
Plaisier sits on the line at £31,750, with Henry Coates — a Players Championship winner this season despite holding no Tour Card — £500 behind him in 65th. Madars Razma and Mario Vandenbogaerde are within touching distance. Gary Anderson is 68th on £29,750, which puts a two-time world champion two thousand pounds and one decent run from a place he has rarely had to think about.
Further back, Nathan Aspinall in 78th, Josh Rock in 80th and Raymond van Barneveld in 81st all need a deep run on at least one of the two days. Aspinall is the sharpest case of the lot: he lost the 2025 final in Minehead and now has to qualify for the chance to go back.
What Littler loses, and what he keeps
What he loses is a televised ranking title he already owns. The 2026 Finals carry a £750,000 prize fund with £130,000 to the champion, and Littler took the trophy in 2025 by beating Aspinall 11-8 — his first win in the event. Minehead will now crown a new champion with the old one at home.
What he keeps is everything else. The main PDC Order of Merit is a separate two-year table that he leads comfortably, so his world number one ranking is untouched. He is already in the Grand Slam of Darts at WV Active Aldersley in Wolverhampton from 14 to 22 November, invited as 2026 world champion, and he defends that world title at Alexandra Palace in December. The gap in his season is one event wide.
Three months ago this was still a live question, and we covered it then as a risk he was running: Littler was on £0 with eight events left. He played two of them, reached a quarter-final and a semi-final, and the arithmetic closed anyway.
What happens in Leicester on 4 and 5 November
The two events are the last ProTour darts of the season and they settle two separate things at once. One is the Minehead 64. The other is the pair of cut lines that fill Alexandra Palace, where the margins are tighter still. A player can walk into the Mattioli Arena on the Wednesday morning outside both fields and leave on the Thursday night inside both.
Dates and venues for the rest of the season are on the 2026 calendar, and the qualifying table itself is live at Players Championship Finals rankings.