Who won the Mediterranean Qualifier 2026?
Marques did, at a hotel in Torrecaballeros on the edge of Segovia, in an event that gave nine countries one shot at the World Championship between them. Andorra, France, Gibraltar, Italy, Malta, Monaco, Portugal, San Marino and Spain all send entries to the Mediterranean Qualifier; one man comes out of it with a flight to London. Marques won the final the hard way, 7-6 in the last leg, against a Spaniard playing on home soil.
It is his World Championship debut at 43. Until Sunday, de Sousa was the only player from Portugal who had ever walked out at Alexandra Palace — a one-man national history that began on the same European qualifying circuit Marques has just come through, and that ended with a PDC major title.
The 2020 Grand Slam champion will not be at Ally Pally
De Sousa arrived in Segovia as comfortably the biggest name in the building, and the only man in the field who had ever won a PDC major. In November 2020 he beat James Wade 16-12 in Coventry to win the Grand Slam of Darts, becoming the first man from the Iberian peninsula to win a PDC major and the first debutant to win that particular title. Earlier the same year he had beaten Michael van Gerwen 8-4 to win the European Darts Grand Prix.
Six years on he is playing regional qualifiers in Spain, because he is no longer a Tour Card holder: he lost his card after a first-round exit at the 2026 World Championship, beaten by Ricardo Pietreczko. The Mediterranean Qualifier was a realistic route back to the stage where he made his name. Perez Ibarra ended it in the quarter-finals, then lost the final by a single leg to a compatriot of the man he had just knocked out.
The timing sharpens it. The 2026 Grand Slam of Darts draw was published on 9 November, the day after Segovia finished, and the 48 names in it do not include the man who won the thing in 2020. The tournament he broke through at starts on Saturday without him; the tournament he broke through from has just gone to someone else.
From World Cup partners to a swapped place
Marques and de Sousa are not strangers. They were Portugal’s pairing at the PDC World Cup of Darts in 2020 and again in 2021, the only two World Cup appearances Marques has made; by 2022 the PDC’s Portuguese place went to a qualifying event and Marques was not part of the team again. The player who stood beside de Sousa in Portugal’s best years on the international stage is now the one taking his country’s World Championship place off him.
Neither man is a product of the Tour Card system. Marques has never held one, and has spent his career on the PDC Europe circuit that runs alongside the professional tour. That circuit is not a sideshow: it is how de Sousa got to Alexandra Palace in the first place, and it is why 48 of the 128 places at the coming World Championship are reserved for players who will never appear on the World Championship race ranking lists at all.
| Event | Where | Qualified | Final |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mediterranean Qualifier | Segovia, Spain | Jose Marques | 7-6 v Ricardo Perez Ibarra |
| CDC Continental Cup | Deer Lake, Canada | Gary Mawson | 8-7 v Kevin Luke |
| Nordic & Baltic Championship | Odense, Denmark | Anton Ă–stlund | 8-4 v Darius Labanauskas |
Marques was one of three men to qualify in the same forty-eight hours, and two of the three did it in a deciding leg. Gary Mawson beat Kevin Luke 8-7 to win the CDC Continental Cup in Newfoundland and return to Alexandra Palace sixteen years after his last appearance; Anton Ă–stlund beat Darius Labanauskas 8-4 in Odense for a debut of his own and the last place in the Grand Slam field. Three continents, three qualifiers, one weekend, and a combined winning margin of six legs.
Source: PDC international qualifier roundup, 9 November 2026; Championship Darts Corporation; PDC Nordic & Baltic
What is still open before the draw
The PDC put the number of outstanding international places at ten when it confirmed the weekend’s three qualifiers. Four single-place national and regional events remain, and the Tour Card Holder Qualifier at the end of the month is worth four on its own — which makes it the single biggest block of places left anywhere in the qualifying structure.
| Date | Event | Places |
|---|---|---|
| Fri 13 November | Polish Qualifier | 1 |
| Sat 14 November | Netherlands & Belgium Qualifier, Den Bosch | 1 |
| Sat 28 November | South-East Europe Qualifier, Nove Zamky | 1 |
| Sun 29 November | Czechia Qualifier, Prague | 1 |
| Mon 30 November | Tour Card Holder Qualifier | 4 |
Those events decide who fills the back of a draw that has grown considerably. The 2026/27 World Championship is the first with 128 players, running from 11 December to 3 January, and the ranking routes close separately — which is the subject of our look at the two cut lines that settle the other eighty places. For the full map of how a player gets in, from the Order of Merit down to a weekend in Segovia, see how to qualify for the PDC World Championship; the 2026 calendar has what is left of the season.
What Marques walks into
A 128-player field means the international routes fill more of the early rounds than they ever have, and the regional circuits have a habit of sending someone who does not go quietly. Andreas Harrysson came out of the Nordic & Baltic rankings a year ago, made his Alexandra Palace debut at 50, knocked out the 12th seed Ross Smith and reached the fourth round. Marques, at 43, gets there seven years earlier than Harrysson did.
He has waited longer than most. No Tour Card, two World Cups alongside de Sousa and then not even that, and a home circuit whose reward for a whole season is one place in one qualifier. At 43 he finally gets the walk-on — out of the same weekend that closed the door on the only Portuguese player who had ever had one.