Nebrida wins the Asian Championship — and a Grand Slam debut
The PDC Asian Championship is the one event on the circuit that ignores the season-long table. Get to the final and you are going to Alexandra Palace, whatever your ranking; win it and you also get a Grand Slam of Darts place. Nebrida did both on Monday, beating Cheng 3-0 to take the title in Hainan.
For the Filipino it means a fifth consecutive World Championship, and a first appearance at the Grand Slam, which returns to Aldersley Leisure Village in Wolverhampton from 7 to 15 November. He arrives at Ally Pally with genuine recent form behind him: at the last World Championship he knocked out Ross Smith 3-0 in straight sets on his way to the third round.
Macau’s first, from 55th in the rankings
Cheng’s week was the one nobody had on their card. He went into the Asian Championship ranked 55th on the Asian Tour Order of Merit and had never reached so much as a semi-final on the circuit. In the quarter-finals he drew Sonny Balagat, ranked 25th and the clear favourite, and finished him off with a 144 checkout. Winning his semi-final took him into the final and, with it, a guaranteed World Championship place.
No player from Macau has ever appeared at the PDC World Championship. Cheng changes that in December, and he does it in a year when the tournament is at its largest ever, with the field moving into the Great Hall at Alexandra Palace. Our earlier report on the 2026/27 dates and venue change covers what that shift means for the event.
Who qualified, and how
Seven names, two routes. Five came through the Asian Tour Order of Merit across a season that ran from Dubai in January to Hainan in September, taking in Japan, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Ulaanbaatar and the Philippines. Two came through the Asian Championship at the end of it.
| Player | Nation | Route |
|---|---|---|
| Ryuta Arihara | Japan | Asian Tour Order of Merit winner |
| Motomu Sakai | Japan | Asian Tour Order of Merit, top five |
| Christian Perez | Philippines | Asian Tour Order of Merit, top five |
| Haruki Muramatsu | Japan | Asian Tour Order of Merit, top five |
| Lok Yin Lee | Hong Kong | Asian Tour Order of Merit, top five |
| Paolo Nebrida | Philippines | Asian Championship winner |
| Kam Weng Cheng | Macau | Asian Championship runner-up |
Three of the five Order of Merit qualifiers are Japanese, which reflects how the circuit has looked all year. Sakai and Muramatsu were the pair who represented Japan at this year’s World Cup of Darts, and Muramatsu spent much of the season second on the table, keeping the pressure on from a long way out.
Sakai’s season was the steady one: two titles and two more finals lost. Christian Perez did it the other way round. Both of the Filipino’s 2026 titles arrived in the same month — he doubled up in Singapore in July — and he reached four further finals across the year without converting them, which was still comfortably enough to stay inside the five. Lok Yin Lee, a World Cup of Darts quarter-finalist with Hong Kong, won again on the circuit in 2026 and closed the season in the qualifying places.
Arihara’s run to the top
The player who forced the table into its final shape was Ryuta Arihara. He finished the season with five Asian Tour titles, four of them in the closing stretch, and the centrepiece was a weekend in the Philippines where he won Events 22, 23 and 24 back to back. Only Lourence Ilagan, in 2019, had taken three successive Asian Tour titles before him.
Four of the five Order of Merit qualifiers. Source: 2026 PDC Asian Tour results (PDC, Darts World).
Muramatsu’s four came in two clean pairs: Events One and Two on the opening weekend in Dubai, then Event 11 in Kuala Lumpur and Event 13 in Ulaanbaatar in the spring. Those four wins were the only Asian Tour finals he reached all year, which is an unusually efficient way to bank a World Championship place.
Topping the Order of Merit is worth more than the Ally Pally ticket. Arihara also takes free entry to Stage Two of Q-School, skipping the first-stage scramble when the Tour Card process comes round again in January — a real advantage, as our guide to the World Championship qualifying routes explains.
What these seven walk into
The 2026/27 World Championship runs from 11 December to 3 January, and the international qualifiers are unseeded, entering from the first round. That is the hard way in — but it is also where the Asian contingent has done its best work. Nebrida’s win over Smith last winter came in exactly that position, and Asian Tour qualifiers have made a habit of removing seeded names in the opening week.
Asia is one of several international pathways feeding the 128-player field, alongside the Nordic & Baltic, Oceanic, American and other regional qualifying series, all of which conclude over the autumn. You can follow the Asian standings on the live PDC Asia rankings, see who is on course from the main ladder on the World Championship Race, and check what is left of the season on the 2026 calendar.
Tickets for the tournament itself have already been through their first general ballot, with the Great Hall move pushing the run to a record 180,000 seats.