How Ratajski beat Littler
Littler took the first leg. He did not win another until the match was almost out of reach. Ratajski, 49, took the next seven on the spin — an 11-darter among them — to go six clear at 7-1, and he was still 8-2 ahead at the second interval after Littler’s misses at double had handed him the chance to stretch further.
Littler did find something. He won four legs in succession to pull back to 8-6 and put the Westfalenhalle on edge, but Ratajski held his nerve, took the next for 9-6, and closed out the match with double 10. No outlet had published either player’s average by the time of writing, but the match reports agree on where the game was settled, and it was on the doubles rather than in the scoring.
It was Ratajski’s first win over Littler. “I played him many times, always lost,” he said afterwards. On his own account of the decisive stretch: “He won three or four legs in a row but then I took my chance when he missed double seven.”
Both men had earned the tie the hard way. Ratajski beat Dave Chisnall 6-2 in round one and then came through the tightest match of the last 16, edging Kevin Doets 10-8 after Doets had got within three legs of a decider. Littler had opened his week with a 6-3 win over William O’Connorand a 105.05 average, the best of the championship at the time, before the Aspinall match raised it to the second-highest average in the tournament’s history.
The quarter-finals in full
Ratajski’s was the narrowest of the four wins, level with Ross Smith’s. Smith opened the afternoon against Luke Woodhouse — the man who had ended holder Gian van Veen’s defence in the last 16— and won with an average of around 107 and seven maximums, the best scoring of the session.
Gerwyn Price came within one dart of something better than a win. Sky Sports and Darts World both report that he was eight darts into a nine-darter in the fourth leg against Stephen Bunting before missing double 12 for it. He led 7-1, let Bunting back to 7-3, then took the last three legs. The reported averages for that match do not agree — 97 on DartsNews, 103 on Sky Sports and Darts World — so neither figure is given here.
Martin Schindler was the most ruthless of the four. He conceded a single leg to Jonny Clayton, who won the Swiss Darts Trophyearlier this month, and by Darts World’s account did not miss a double in the first seven legs of the match. It is the sort of scoreline that usually belongs to a round-one mismatch rather than a major quarter-final.
| Winner | Score | Opponent |
|---|---|---|
| Martin Schindler | 10-1 | Jonny Clayton |
| Gerwyn Price | 10-3 | Stephen Bunting |
| Ross Smith | 10-6 | Luke Woodhouse |
| Krzysztof Ratajski | 10-6 | Luke Littler |
Margins calculated from the quarter-final scores above. Source: Darts World, DartsNews, Sky Sports.
Has Littler ever won the European Championship?
Dortmund has been the awkward one. Littler has won every other PDC major; the European Championship is the one he has never taken, and the pattern of his three visits there is a strange one — he goes a round further every year and still leaves empty-handed.
| Year | Round reached | Beaten by | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | First round | Andrew Gilding | 6-4 |
| 2025 | Last 16 | James Wade | 10-7 |
| 2026 | Quarter-final | Krzysztof Ratajski | 10-6 |
The defeat is also the sharper for what came the night before it. Littler had beaten Nathan Aspinall 10-5 in the last 16 with an average of 114.47, the second-highest in the history of the tournament. Fewer than 24 hours later he was out, having played the best darts of the week and then some of his worst.
His bid to win every major in a single calendar year, the one we looked at back in August, had already ended before he got to Dortmund. What is left of the 2026 season is the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton and the Players Championship Finals at Minehead, and he is defending champion at both.
Who does Ratajski play in the semi-final?
Reaching the last four is worth £50,000 against the £35,000 a losing quarter-finalist takes, out of a £750,000 fund that is £150,000 up on last year. Beating Littler therefore guaranteed Ratajski a further £15,000 at minimum. The champion collects £150,000, and every pound of it counts towards the Order of Merit.
Standing in his way is Martin Schindler, the last German left in the draw, playing in front of a Westfalenhalle crowd that has never seen one of its own win this tournament. On the evidence of the Clayton match he is the form player of the four, which makes Ratajski an outsider again on the same day he beat the world No.1. Gerwyn Price plays Ross Smith in the other semi-final. Both are played over the best of 21 legs rather than the best of 19 used in the earlier rounds — the full ladder is set out in our European Championship format guide — and the final follows on the same evening. The rest of the season is on the 2026 calendar.