How many players are in the World Darts Championship?
128. The field was expanded from 96 for the 2025/26 staging, and the change did more than add bodies to the draw. Under the old structure the top 32 seeds were handed byes and started in round two. Now everybody enters at round one, which means the seeds play an extra match and the world number one has exactly the same number of hurdles as a qualifier from the Nordic & Baltic Tour: seven.
The expansion also locked in a minimum of four women in the field, up from two. The routes into those 128 places — Order of Merit, ProTour Order of Merit and 48 international qualifying spots — are a subject of their own, covered in full in our guide to how to qualify for the PDC World Darts Championship.
How long is each match?
Matches lengthen as the tournament goes on, but not evenly. Rounds one and two share a format, rounds three and four share a format, and then every remaining round gets its own. A player who reaches the final has been asked to win three sets, then three, then four, then four, then five, then six, then seven.
| Round | Players | Format | First to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | 128 | Best of 5 sets | 3 sets |
| Round 2 | 64 | Best of 5 sets | 3 sets |
| Round 3 | 32 | Best of 7 sets | 4 sets |
| Last 16 | 16 | Best of 7 sets | 4 sets |
| Quarter-final | 8 | Best of 9 sets | 5 sets |
| Semi-final | 4 | Best of 11 sets | 6 sets |
| Final | 2 | Best of 13 sets | 7 sets |
Source: Sky Sports, ESPN
Add those up and the champion has to win 32 sets. Win every one of them 3-0 and that is still 96 legs of darts across three weeks — which is why nobody has ever gone through an Alexandra Palace fortnight without dropping sets.
What is a set in darts?
A set is the best of five legs: first to three. Win three legs, you win the set, and the scoreboard resets to 0-0 for the next one. The player who threw first in the opening leg of a set throws first in the opening leg of the following set, so the throw alternates set by set rather than running continuously through the match.
A scoreline of 3-2 in a first-round match therefore means three sets to two, not three legs to two. The losing player in that match has won at least six legs and possibly ten; the winner has won nine. Commentary shorthand does not always make that obvious, and it is the single most common source of confusion for viewers arriving from the leg-play events on Sky earlier in the year.
That resetting is the whole character of the tournament. In leg play, a player who is broken early is simply behind for the rest of the match. In set play the damage is contained: lose a set 0-3 and you have surrendered the same amount as losing it 2-3. It rewards players who can win three legs in a burst and forgives a bad patch, which is why the Worlds throws up comebacks that a leg-play major would never allow. Our guide to legs, sets and scoring formats goes deeper on the difference.
Set play is not unique to Ally Pally, but it is rare. The World Grand Prix uses sets with a double to start as well as a double to finish; the Winmau World Masters uses much shorter two-leg sets. The World Matchplay, the Grand Slam and the entire ProTour are straight leg play.
What happens in a deciding set?
This is the rule that decides the tournament’s most famous matches, and it is the one most casual viewers get wrong. In a deciding set — the final set of a match that has gone the distance — you cannot win it 3-2 in the ordinary way once the legs reach 2-2. From there the set must be won by two clear legs, so it goes to 4-2, 5-3 and onwards.
There is a ceiling. If the deciding set reaches 5-5, the match is settled by a single sudden-death leg. That leg is played with no throw for the bull: the throw simply alternates as it has all match, so one player carries the advantage of throwing first into the biggest leg of their life. It is the darts equivalent of a penalty shootout with the order already fixed.
Worked through, a deciding set can run 2-2, then 3-3, 4-4, 5-5 and a final leg — eleven legs in one set, on top of everything that came before it. A best-of-five-sets first-round tie has a theoretical maximum of four completed sets plus that eleven-leg decider, which is why a match billed as the shortest format of the tournament can still outlast a quarter-final that goes 5-1.
How do the seedings and the draw work?
The top 32 players on the PDC Order of Meritare seeded, using the standings after the last ranking event before the draw. Seeding no longer buys a bye — that disappeared with the 96-player field — but it still buys separation: the seeds are spread through the bracket so the highest-ranked players cannot meet each other until the later rounds.
The practical effect for a seed is that the first round is now a genuine hazard rather than a formality. A top-16 player opens against a qualifier over the shortest format in the tournament, best of five sets, on a stage where the qualifier has nothing to lose. You can follow who is currently heading for a seeding on the live World Championship Race, which updates after every ranking event.
How much is the World Darts Championship worth?
£5,000,000 in total, with £1,000,000 to the champion — the largest prize fund and the largest first prize in darts. The floor matters as much as the ceiling: every one of the 64 players beaten in round one still leaves with £15,000, which for an international qualifier is often the biggest cheque of their year.
| Stage reached | Players | Prize each | Stage total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Champion | 1 | £1,000,000 | £1,000,000 |
| Runner-up | 1 | £400,000 | £400,000 |
| Semi-final | 2 | £200,000 | £400,000 |
| Quarter-final | 4 | £100,000 | £400,000 |
| Last 16 | 8 | £60,000 | £480,000 |
| Round 3 | 16 | £35,000 | £560,000 |
| Round 2 | 32 | £25,000 | £800,000 |
| Round 1 | 64 | £15,000 | £960,000 |
| Total | 128 | — | £5,000,000 |
Every penny of it counts towards the two-year Order of Merit, which is why a deep run at Ally Pally reshapes the rankings more violently than any other week of the season. A quarter-final alone is worth more than winning most European Tour events.
What the move to 128 actually changed
Three things, and they interact. The seeds lost their byes, so the top 32 now face an extra opponent and an extra chance to go out early. The first-round money became a floor of £15,000 for 64 players rather than 32, spreading a far larger share of the fund to the bottom of the draw. And the schedule stretched, because 64 first-round matches have to be fitted into the opening days before the tournament settles into its familiar afternoon-and-evening rhythm.
For the players at the top it is a harder tournament to win than it was, simply because there is one more coin-flip in the way. Luke Littler and Luke Humphries now have to survive seven matches rather than six, with the first of them played over the shortest distance of the lot.
When is the next World Championship?
The 2026/27 edition runs from Friday 11 December 2026 to Sunday 3 January 2027, with the usual Christmas break, and moves into Alexandra Palace’s Great Hall for the first time — details in our report on the confirmed 2026/27 dates and venue change. The format above is unchanged: 128 players, set play throughout, £5m, and the Sid Waddell Trophy at the end of it.