How do you qualify for the 2027 World Championship?
Alexandra Palace takes 128 players, and they arrive by three routes. The top 40 of the two-year PDC Order of Merit go through automatically. The next 40 come off the one-year ProTour Order of Merit — the highest-ranked players on it who have not already qualified by the first route. The remaining 48 places belong to the international qualifiers. Our guide to every qualification route sets out how each of those feeds the draw.
The two ranking routes close at different moments, and that is the part worth understanding this week. The Order of Merit cut-off is 29 November, the last day of the Players Championship Finals, so the Grand Slam and Minehead can still move it. The ProTour list has no such grace. Players Championship 34 on 5 November is the 34th and final Players Championship of the year, and the 15th and last European Tour event — the Dutch Darts Championship, where Niels Zonneveld won his first senior title — was played in Maastricht in mid-October. Nothing else feeds the ProTour table. For everyone depending on that second set of 40 places, Leicester is the end of the road.
The two cut lines
Both are absurdly tight. On the main Order of Merit, Callan Rydz holds the 40th and final automatic place on £193,250, with Jeffrey de Graaf £500 behind him. On the ProTour list, with everyone already through the first route stripped out, Raymond van Barneveld sits 40th on £31,750 — level with Wesley Plaisier in 39th and £500 clear of Henry Coates in 41st.
| Pos | Player | Order of Merit |
|---|---|---|
| 38 | Karel Sedlacek | £201,250 |
| 39 | Justin Hood | £198,500 |
| 40 | Callan Rydz — last automatic place | £193,250 |
| 41 | Jeffrey de Graaf | £192,750 |
| 42 | James Hurrell | £177,250 |
| 43 | Sebastian Bialecki | £174,500 |
| Pos | Player | ProTour earnings |
|---|---|---|
| 38 | Owen Bates | £32,000 |
| 39 | Wesley Plaisier | £31,750 |
| 40 | Raymond van Barneveld — last place | £31,750 |
| 41 | Henry Coates | £31,250 |
| 42 | Cam Crabtree | £30,500 |
| 43 | Shane McGuirk | £30,500 |
The ProTour figures are the ones that stop moving next week. Van Barneveld is defending his place with two events left to play, and the eight men immediately behind him are all close enough to take it with a decent afternoon.
Everyone within one good run
Source: dartsrankings.com World Championship Race, updated after Players Championship 32; gaps calculated by Darts Rankings
Eight players sit behind the cut and every one of them is within £2,250 of it. Set that against what the floor actually pays and the scale of the task becomes clear.
| Stage reached | Prize |
|---|---|
| Winner | £15,000 |
| Runner-up | £10,000 |
| Semi-finalists (2) | £6,500 |
| Quarter-finalists (4) | £4,000 |
| Last 16 (8) | £3,000 |
| Last 32 (16) | £2,000 |
| Last 64 (32) | £1,250 |
One win in a 128-player field puts £1,250 on the board. That single victory is worth more than the £500 at either cut line, which is the whole point. Coates needs a single match to displace van Barneveld. Crabtree, McGuirk and Burton need two. Only the last four — van der Velde, Kenny, Dragt and Evans — need three wins to go clear, and with two events to play there are two chances at it. All of which assumes van Barneveld adds nothing to his own total in the meantime.
Ricky Evans and the long way round
Ricky Evans is the name that has drawn most attention, and he is the furthest back of the eight: 48th on the non-qualified ProTour list on £29,500, £2,250 adrift of van Barneveld. He is also 48th on the main Order of Merit, which is nowhere near the top 40. The last 16 at one of the Leicester events pays £3,000 and would carry him past van Barneveld on its own; a win on each of the two days, £2,500 in total, would also be enough. SPORTbible reported on Friday that Evans is among a group of established names currently outside the qualifying places, alongside Dimitri Van den Bergh, Martin Lukeman and Andreas Harrysson.
Of that group Evans is much the closest. The other three sit well outside both ranking lists rather than on the shoulder of them, far enough back that two days in Leicester realistically will not be enough on prize money alone. Reported positions for them vary between outlets, so the safest reading is the simple one: Evans has a gap he can close with wins, and the others are relying on something else.
Missing both ranking routes is not quite the end of it. The 48 international places run through the Asian Tour, the Nordic & Baltic circuit, the Americas, Africa and a set of national qualifiers, and players who fall out of the main lists can still find a way in through one of them.
What Leicester settles, and what it does not
The same two events close the Players Championship Order of Merit that decides the 64-player field for the Players Championship Finals at Minehead — a race that tightened considerably when eight of the world’s top 16 skipped Den Bosch last week and left the places around the cut to be fought over by the players who did turn up. Chris Dobey took the second of those titles on Thursday.
After 5 November the floor season is done and the two remaining ranking events are the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton and the Finals at Minehead, both of which only the already-qualified can play. The Order of Merit keeps moving until 29 November; the ProTour list is frozen the moment the last dart lands in Leicester. The World Championship itself begins on 11 December in Alexandra Palace’s Great Hall.
Both lists update after every ranking event on our live World Championship Race and ProTour Order of Merit pages, and the rest of the season is on the 2026 calendar.