The one win that settled it
Last week we set out how tight the arithmetic had become: with two events left, van Barneveld held the 40th and final ProTour place by ÂŁ500 from Henry Coates in 41st, and eight players sat within ÂŁ2,250 of him. The top 40 of the two-year Order of Merit go to Alexandra Palace automatically; the next 40 come off the one-year ProTour list, and that list stops dead the moment the last dart lands at Players Championship 34. Van Barneveld had dropped out of the top 40 of the main ranking after a poor year, so the second route was the only direct one left.
He did the heavy lifting on the Wednesday. Four wins carried him to the quarter-finals of Players Championship 33, where Gary Anderson beat him 6–3. That run was worth more than the gap he was defending. The van Schie win the next day made it certain, and it was the only match he won on the Thursday.
| Event | Round | Opponent | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| PC 33 | Last 128 | Adam Lipscombe | W 6–2 |
| PC 33 | Last 64 | Ricky Evans | W 6–3 |
| PC 33 | Last 32 | Daryl Gurney | W 6–3 |
| PC 33 | Last 16 | Tyler Thorpe | W 6–4 |
| PC 33 | Quarter-final | Gary Anderson | L 3–6 |
| PC 34 | Last 128 | Jimmy van Schie | W 6–2 |
| PC 34 | Last 64 | Chris Dobey | L 3–6 |
Seven matches, five won. Ricky Evans, the man most often named as the one chasing him down, was beaten by van Barneveld himself in the second round on the Wednesday. Evans must now come through a Tour Card Holder Qualifier for the World Championship to reach the Palace at all.
What the record actually is
This is the part worth getting right, because two different appearance records are routinely confused. Phil Taylor holds the PDC-only mark with 25 World Championship appearances. Van Barneveld’s 34 are spread across two organisations: he debuted at the BDO event in 1991, won four Lakeside titles in 1998, 1999, 2003 and 2005, switched codes, and then beat Taylor from three sets down to take the PDC title in 2007. The difference between the PDC and the BDO, and why careers like his are counted twice over, is set out in our guide to the governing bodies.
The man he has passed is Steve Beaton, whose 33 appearances also span both codes. Van Barneveld drew level with him at last December’s championship and is now one clear. There is a distinction between the two runs that the raw numbers hide.
| Player | Apps | Debut | Nature of the run |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raymond van Barneveld | 34 | 1991 (BDO) | Interrupted — retired after 2020, returned via Q-School |
| Steve Beaton | 33 | 1992 (BDO) | Unbroken — 33 consecutive, ending in 2024 |
Beaton’s 33 were consecutive, which is its own kind of achievement — he did not miss a single edition between his debut and the end of his run. Van Barneveld’s total is the larger one but it has a hole in it: he announced his retirement in 2019, played what was meant to be his last championship, then went back to Q-School and won a Tour Card again in early 2021. The record he holds is for most appearances, not most in a row.
A season that needed two good afternoons
The qualification looks like a close shave because it was one, and the shape of his year explains why. Of his last ten Players Championships, eight ended with a single win. Two did not.
Source: barney.nl official results page; match counts by Darts Rankings
Players Championship 30 in Den Bosch in September and Players Championship 33 last Wednesday are the two bars that got him to Alexandra Palace. Both were runs to the quarter-finals; both came after stretches of opening-round exits. The second arrived on the second-to-last day it could have been any use. He told the Dutch site NU.nl, in an interview reported by DartsNews and Oche180, that the pressure through those final weeks had been inhuman, and that in previous years he had known by February or March that he was in.
The shoes
His own explanation for the upturn is footwear. Practising in his garage, he found he could hardly miss, and realised he had on a pair of white Nike Air Force 1 trainers rather than the ECCO shoes he has always played in. The extra height changed his stance. He asked his partner to track down the same model in black, on the grounds that white trainers look wrong under black trousers, and wore those for both days in Leicester.
“After 42 years, you change something and suddenly it works,” he said.
Whether the shoes or the quarter-final run deserve the credit, the contrast with twelve months ago is sharp. He went out of last year’s championship in the first round, beaten 3–0 by Switzerland’s Stefan Bellmont, and said afterwards that Christmas did not count for him that year because he had nothing to celebrate.
What happens in December
The World Championship begins on 11 December in Alexandra Palace’s Great Hall, and van Barneveld goes in unseeded. In a 128-player field with no byes, every player starts in the first round, so one of the 32 seeds is a live possibility for him in his opening tie. He will be 59 for the whole of it and turns 60 in April. He has said he intends to play on in 2027 on a reduced schedule, and that missing out this time would have made him question whether to continue at all.
One thing Leicester did not give him was Wolverhampton. The Grand Slam Tour Card Holder Qualifier on Friday sent ten players through and he was not one of them, and he is outside the 64 for the Players Championship Finals at Minehead too. His season now has one tournament left in it, which is the one he has played more often than anybody.
The full qualifying picture updates after every ranking event on our World Championship Race page, and the rest of the season is on the 2026 calendar.