How the final was won
For four legs there was nothing in it. Then Smith won six on the spin. An 86 finish broke Schindler’s throw and a 91 checkout — both reported by Darts World and DartsNews — carried him to 8–2, and when he took the twelfth leg for 9–3 the final looked finished with eight legs still on the board.
It was not. Schindler won the next four, and he won them properly: a 116 checkout, then 127 on the bullseye, the kind of pair that turns a dead hall into a dangerous one. At 9–7 Smith was two legs from the title and had stopped scoring like a man who expected to get there. He broke the run in the seventeenth, Schindler held for 10–8, and then came the uncomfortable part — Smith hit his tenth maximum of the match, missed four darts at the championship double, and finally landed double five with the fifth.
Nobody published a three-dart average for either man, so none is given here. What the numbers that did get reported say is that Smith’s scoring won the middle of the match and his finishing nearly lost him the end of it. He described himself afterwards as “over the moon” to “win another major”, and rather more plainly as “buzzing”; he also conceded, without much argument, that Schindler had refused to let the thing go.
Nineteen legs in all. Smith won seven of the eight that took him from 2-2 to 9-3; Schindler won five of the last seven and still lost. Source: Darts World, DartsNews and Sky Sports Darts.
The same score, the same hall, four years apart
Smith’s first major title came at the Westfalenhallen in October 2022, when he beat Michael Smith11–8 on a 101.32 average and collected £120,000 from a £500,000 fund. Four years later it is the same building, the same scoreline, and £150,000 out of £750,000 — the prize fund has grown by half in the interval, which is as neat a measure as any of what has happened to the European Championship since.
In between, Dortmund was the only televised title he had. That drought ended five weeks ago in Amsterdam, where he beat Gerwyn Price 11–5 to win the World Series of Darts Finals. Two TV titles in five weeks, after four years of none, is a strange shape for a career to take.
Ross Smith’s route to the title
He was the top seed, having topped the European Tour Order of Merit with £158,000, and seeding is usually the first thing a week like this throws away. Not here. Smith won five matches and was never taken to a deciding leg in any of them.
| Round | Opponent | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Round one | Karel Sedlacek | 6-4 |
| Round two | Damon Heta | 10-7 |
| Quarter-final | Luke Woodhouse | 10-6 |
| Semi-final | Gerwyn Price | 11-7 |
| Final | Martin Schindler | 11-8 |
The quarter-final against Luke Woodhouse was his best session of the week — an average of around 107 and seven maximums, the heaviest scoring of a Sunday afternoon that also removed the world No.1. The semi-final was harder than 11–7 reads: Gerwyn Priceled 4–1 before Smith scored his way back into it, broke throw in the thirteenth leg off back-to-back 180s, and closed it on double two.
Who else has won the European Championship twice?
Smith becomes the fifth man to win it more than once, and the first to do so since Peter Wright in 2023. The list is short and the top of it is unreachable: nobody has beaten four titles, and nobody has managed four in a row since Michael van Gerwen stopped in 2017.
| Player | Years won | Titles |
|---|---|---|
| Phil Taylor | 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 | 4 |
| Michael van Gerwen | 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 | 4 |
| Rob Cross | 2019, 2021 | 2 |
| Peter Wright | 2020, 2023 | 2 |
| Ross Smith | 2022, 2026 | 2 |
Ten of the nineteen stagings have gone to a first-time winner, which is why a second name on the trophy still counts for something. The single-year winners are Simon Whitlock, Adrian Lewis, James Wade, Ritchie Edhouse and last year’s champion Gian van Veen, whose defence ended in the last 16 against Woodhouse.
What the title does to Smith’s ranking
Rather a lot, because every pound of the £150,000 is ranking money. Smith went to Dortmund 14th on the PDC Order of Meritand came home sixth — a jump of eight places in four days. That is a seeding question as much as a vanity one, with the World Championship ballot already open and the top 16 split across the bracket.
It is worth holding the two figures next to each other. Topping the European Tour Order of Merit took Smith a full season of floor events and £158,000 of prize money. The Westfalenhalle paid him £150,000 in four days. That is the arithmetic that makes a televised major worth more than a good year, and the reason the £70,000 gap between champion and runner-up matters more in late October than at any other point in the calendar — the European Championship format guide sets out where the rest of the £750,000 lands.
Schindler’s week ended one match short
The German was the story of the weekend regardless of Sunday night. Reaching the final made him the first German player to contest a televised PDC ranking final, and the route there got steadily more improbable: 10–4 against Jermaine Wattimena in the last 16, then a quarter-final in which he conceded a single leg to Jonny Clayton, then 11–6 against Krzysztof Ratajskifrom 8–2 up.
In the final he was out-scored for eight legs and then very nearly won it on finishing alone. Four legs in a row from 9–3 down, two of them closed with the 116 and the 127, is the passage of play the Westfalenhalle will remember rather than the scoreline — and at 9–7 the hall had decided it was happening.
A first German major title is still outstanding, and it was two legs away. The £80,000 he took as runner-up did at least settle his place at the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton, which is next on the televised 2026 calendar and the first chance any of the four Dortmund semi-finalists get to do it again.