Who won the 2026 WDF Europe Cup?
The Europe Cup is the World Darts Federation’s international team championship, played every two years by national federations rather than by individual tour professionals. The 2026 edition — first staged in Copenhagen in 1978 and played every two years since, with no 2020 edition — finished at Við Tjarnir in Tórshavn on Saturday 3 October, with the WDF putting the field at 284 players from 37 nations.
Six gold medals were decided across singles, pairs and teams. Singles finals are played as the best of 13 legs, pairs the best of 11 and teams the best of 17, so every one of the scores below is a first-to-seven, first-to-six or first-to-nine finish.
| Event | Winner | Runner-up | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men's singles | Mitchell Lawrie (SCO) | Zvonimir Lešić (CRO) | 7-4 |
| Women's singles | Deta Hedman (ENG) | Eve Watson (WAL) | 7-4 |
| Men's pairs | Llew Bevan & David Davies (WAL) | Teemu Harju & Jonas Masalin (FIN) | 6-4 |
| Women's pairs | Laura Turner & Steph Clarke (ENG) | Anna Forsmark & Snezana Veljkovic (SWE) | 6-1 |
| Men's teams | Republic of Ireland | England | 9-2 |
| Women's teams | England | Republic of Ireland | 9-8 |
Mitchell Lawrie: the youngest Europe Cup singles champion
Lawrie was born on 4 November 2010, which left him a month short of his 16th birthday on the day he won a senior continental title. He whitewashed Anton Östlund 6-0 in the semi-final, then held off Lešić in a final where both men scored heavily: 101.26 against 96.52.
That he can do this at 15 is not news to anyone who follows the amateur game. Lawrie became the youngest world number one in the WDF’s rankings in March, and he arrived in the Faroes having already won the Europe Cup Youth singles in Limerick in July. At the 2025 WDF World Championship he became the youngest player ever to compete in the senior event, taking a record off Luke Littler in the process, and then the first teenager to reach the final, where Jimmy van Schie beat him 6-3. He won the WDF World Youth Championship at the same Lakeside staging.
Of the four singles finalists in Tórshavn, Lawrie was the only one to average above 100 — and the gap between his 101.26 and the three other finalists is the clearest number of the week.
Source: Darts World, Dartsnews and dartn.de. Bars scaled to a 110 maximum.
When does Mitchell Lawrie become PDC-eligible?
This is the part that matters to anyone watching the professional ranks, and the answer is a specific date: 4 November 2026, when Lawrie turns 16. The PDC Development Tour is open to players aged 16 to 24 who sit outside the top 64 of the Order of Merit, and Qualifying School is open to any player who is 16 or over on its opening day — the 2026 edition ran from 5 to 11 January in Kalkar and Milton Keynes.
So the 2027 Development Tour and the 2027 Q-School are the first PDC routes available to him, and nothing before his birthday is. Until then the WDF circuit is where he plays, which is exactly the pattern the Development Tour Order of Merit has been absorbing all season: this year’s finale at Robin Park handed Tour Cards to Jamai van den Herik and Jack Drayton, both of whom came through junior darts first.
Deta Hedman wins again, 32 years on
Hedman’s first Europe Cup women’s singles title came in Stockholm in 1994. Because the event is biennial, her second arrived 15 editions later. She is also the reigning WDF world champion, having won that title at Lakeside as the oldest champion in its history, and she went to Tórshavn with that behind her rather than as a veteran making up a team.
The 7-4 win over Watson was built on an 80.81 average to the Welsh player’s 71.04. Hedman then played the decisive leg of the women’s teams final, which England won 9-8 against the Republic of Ireland after the tie went to a deciding leg; she closed it out in 14 darts. PDC audiences will know her from the Women’s Series and from the Women’s World Matchplay, where she reached the quarter-finals this summer.
England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland — and nobody else
Eight golds were available in Tórshavn: the six finals above, plus the men’s and women’s overall standings, which Ireland and England won respectively. All eight went to the four nations of the British Isles, from a field the WDF counted as 37 nations.
England’s four were the largest haul, and every one of them came from the women’s side of the draw. Their men lost the teams final 9-2 to Ireland, who beat them on the same closing day that England’s women beat Ireland’s by a single leg. Scotland’s entire gold medal count was the 15-year-old.
| Nation | Golds | Events won |
|---|---|---|
| England | 4 | Women's singles, pairs, teams, overall |
| Republic of Ireland | 2 | Men's teams, men's overall |
| Wales | 1 | Men's pairs |
| Scotland | 1 | Men's singles |
How the Europe Cup relates to the PDC circuit
It does not feed into the PDC rankings, and no Europe Cup result moves a player on the Order of Merit. The two bodies have run parallel structures since the 1997 settlement that followed the breakaway, a split explained in full in our guide to the PDC and the WDF. What the WDF side does supply is players, and the traffic has been one-directional for years: Littler and Beau Greaves both came up through youth and federation darts before they played a PDC ranking event.
That makes the Europe Cup worth watching for the same reason the World Youth Championship is — it names the players who turn up on the professional entry lists two or three years later. The next PDC event on the schedule is the Swiss Darts Trophy in Basel from 9 to 11 October, and the full season is on the 2026 calendar.