WDF World Championship 2026 Draw: Every Lakeside Tie

Who plays who in the Open draw?

Forty-eight players, 16 of them seeded. The 32 unseeded names contest a first round over the opening weekend; the seeds come in at round two against whoever survives. The table below is the whole top half and bottom half of the bracket in the order the World Darts Federation published it, with each player’s position on the qualification list in the middle column, because that column turns out to explain the shape of the draw.

The first round is drawn from two pots, not one

Look down the middle column. Every one of the 16 first-round ties pairs a player ranked between 17th and 32nd on the qualification list with a player ranked between 33rd and 48th. There is not a single exception across the bracket, which is not what a free draw of 32 names would produce.

The practical effect is protection for the 16 players who just missed a seeding. Haupai Puha, 17th and the highest-ranked unseeded man, drew Tomoya Goto from 40th rather than one of the names immediately below him. Daniel Zapata, 18th, drew Jack Drayton from 42nd. At the other end, Jitse van der Wal came last on the list at 48th and was handed Sean Fisher from 25th, the toughest first-round draw available to him. Nobody from the upper pot can be knocked out by another upper-pot player on the opening weekend, which is a meaningful advantage in a best-of-five-set match where a single bad leg can cost a set.

It also means the unseeded half of the field splits cleanly into likely and unlikely survivors, and the one tie that most obviously defies that is Jeff Smith against David Davies. Smith, 24th on the list after winning the Toronto Area Open, was runner-up at the 2016 BDO World Championship staged at this venue, losing 7-1 to Scott Waites. Davies, 43rd, qualified as the 2025 Irish Open winner. A former world finalist has to win a preliminary match before he gets near Corne Groeneveld, the 11th seed.

Lawrie cannot meet the only former champion before the final

The seeds are slotted into the bracket in the standard order — 1, 16, 8, 9, 4, 13, 5, 12 in the top half, then 2, 15, 7, 10, 3, 14, 6, 11 in the bottom — which is how both the federation and the independent draw listings print them. Follow that through and the consequences are fixed before a dart is thrown.

Lawrie’s quarter contains Scott Robertson (16), Kaya Baysal (8) and Mursel Yavuz (9). Baysal is the interesting one: he is the second seed in the Open Youth championship running alongside the senior event, in which Lawrie is the defending champion and top seed. The two could meet twice at the same tournament, in the Open quarter-finals and in the youth draw.

Neil Duff sits in the other half. The Northern Irishman won the inaugural WDF title here in 2022, beating Thibault Tricole 6-5 in a deciding set to become the first world champion from Northern Ireland, and he is the only former Open champion entered — last year’s winner, Jimmy van Schie, gave up his defence after taking a PDC Tour Card. Duff is seeded 15th, which puts him in Jenson Walker’s last-16 slot and on the far side of the draw from Lawrie. The 16-year-old who won the WDF Europe Cup singles in October would have to reach Sunday 6 December to face him.

Duff’s own opener is Lewis Gurney or Ron Meulenkamp, the 23rd and 36th names on the list, which is as even a first-round tie as the two-pot method allows. Quite how much movement there now is between the amateur and professional circuits is the subject of our guide to the sport’s two governing bodies.

Why Andras Borbely is not in the draw

One name that appeared on the Open race table a fortnight ago is missing from the bracket. Andras Borbely had done enough on the WDF list to qualify for Lakeside, then won the Hungarian Darts Super League play-offs and with it Hungary’s place at Alexandra Palace. He does not appear in the federation’s final 48, and the rule the WDF publishes alongside its qualification lists covers the case directly: players who qualify for both world championships and elect to play the PDC’s are removed and replaced under its criteria.

Scott Robertson is the player who benefits, seeded 16th and drawn into Lawrie’s section. That is the second time this draw has been reshaped by a player choosing London over Frimley Green, after van Schie vacated the title itself, and the two cases are not quite the same thing: van Schie gave up a defence he had earned, Borbely gave up a place he had never played for. Either way the Open field has lost its champion and one of its 16 seeds to the same pull.

Two beaten finalists meet in the women’s first round

Twenty-four players, eight seeded, and the harshest tie of the whole weekend sits in the sixth pairing. Lerena Rietbergen was the top seed last December and lost the final 4-1 in sets to Deta Hedman, who at 66 became the oldest world champion the sport has had. Sophie McKinlay was runner-up the year before that, beaten 4-1 by Beau Greaves in the 2024 final. Both are unseeded this time, both are in round one, and they have been drawn against each other, with Aileen de Graaf waiting for the winner.

Hedman’s own opener is as gentle as the draw allows. She faces Cali West of the United States or Lovely-Mae Orbeta, the Philippines Open winner, neither of whom has played at Lakeside before. Aurora Fochesato makes a senior debut against Steph Clarke in the fourth pairing.

The two junior draws produced a similar inversion to the women’s. Paige Pauling, the 2024 girls’ champion, is the top seed in a six-player bracket; Zehra Gemi, who won the title in 2025, is unseeded and plays Celina Glaser in the first round. In the 12-player Open Youth event, Lawrie is defending the title he won last year and starts against Jack Nankervis or Cori Wiltshire, while Ben Townley faces 12-year-old Addison Hefferon.

Nineteen nations in a 48-player field

Counting the nationalities the federation lists against all 48 Open entrants gives 19 countries, and England supplies 11 of them, fewer than a quarter of the field. The Netherlands is next on seven, and eight nations have a single representative apiece.

Two of those flags are new to the venue. The federation bills Daniel Zapata, representing Catalonia, and Terry Jun Hao Tan of Malaysia as first-time nations at Lakeside, and the draw has put both of them in the first round on opposite sides of the bracket.

How long is each match?

Sets throughout, and short ones by PDC standards. The Open runs on best of five sets until the quarter-finals and finishes at best of 11, two sets shorter than the final at Alexandra Palace. Set play rewards a different kind of player from straight legs, because a session of poor scoring costs one set rather than the match — the difference our guide to legs, sets and formats sets out.

What is still to come

The order of play is the missing piece. The federation says the playing schedule will be finalised no later than Monday 9 November, which will fix which of the 16 first-round ties go on the Friday and which wait for the Saturday, and whether the two junior finals keep their traditional slot alongside the senior semi-finals. Tickets are being sold online through Eventbrite, and every session is streamed free on the WDF’s YouTube channel.

Lakeside opens on 27 November and finishes on 6 December, five days before the PDC World Championship starts in London. Both are on the darts calendar.