Littler drawn against a European Tour winner
Of the 16 ProTour qualifiers Littler could have drawn, Woodhouse is among the least welcome. The 37-year-old broke through in 2026 with two PDC titles inside 12 days, the second of them the Baltic Sea Darts Open, where he beat Ryan Joyce 8-4 in the final with a 98.61 average. That form is what carried him into the top 16 of the one-year ProTour list and into this draw.
Littler won his first World Grand Prix in 2025, beating Luke Humphries 6-1 in the final at this same venue. First-round matches here are the best of three sets, which is the shortest format in the tournament and historically the most volatile — a seed who cannot find an opening double has very little road left to recover on.
The full first-round draw
Every tie pairs one of the top 16 on the Order of Merit with a qualifier from the one-year ProTour rankings. Seeds are listed first.
| Seed | Player | Opponent |
|---|---|---|
| (1) | Luke Littler | Luke Woodhouse |
| (2) | Luke Humphries | Dave Chisnall |
| (3) | Gian van Veen | Dirk van Duijvenbode |
| (4) | Gerwyn Price | Sebastian Bialecki |
| (5) | Jonny Clayton | Krzysztof Ratajski |
| (6) | James Wade | Joe Cullen |
| (7) | Josh Rock | Niels Zonneveld |
| (8) | Danny Noppert | Niko Springer |
| (9) | Michael van Gerwen | Ryan Joyce |
| (10) | Gary Anderson | Damon Heta |
| (11) | Stephen Bunting | Andrew Gilding |
| (12) | Wessel Nijman | Rob Cross |
| (13) | Ross Smith | Cameron Menzies |
| (14) | Ryan Searle | William O’Connor |
| (15) | Chris Dobey | Jermaine Wattimena |
| (16) | Nathan Aspinall | Kevin Doets |
Which ties actually matter
Second seed Humphries, the 2023 champion, drew Dave Chisnall — a man who has already contested a World Grand Prix final, losing to Phil Taylor in 2013. Chisnall is exactly the kind of heavy scorer who can survive a cold start in a double-start leg, and it is the one first-round tie any seed would have been happy to avoid.
Gary Anderson against Damon Heta is the other tie that reads badly for the seed. Heta reached the semi-finals of the Flanders Darts Trophy this month before losing to eventual champion James Wade, and he arrives in Leicester in the best European form of any qualifier in the draw.
Elsewhere, six-time champion Michael van Gerwenplays Ryan Joyce, the man Woodhouse beat in that Baltic Sea final. Wessel Nijman, seeded 12th, draws Rob Cross — a former world champion who comes into this one through the ProTour route rather than as a seed. Wade, fresh from Antwerp, meets Joe Cullen.
The major that keeps ambushing its favourites
Seeding counts for less here than anywhere else on the calendar, and the recent roll of honour shows it. In 2024, Belgium’s Mike De Decker beat defending champion Humphries 6-4 in the final to take his first televised title of any kind — at 28, and from outside the seeded 16. Daryl Gurney’s 5-4 win over Simon Whitlock in 2017 was likewise his first major televised title.
The reason is mechanical rather than mystical. A player who cannot find the opening double is not scoring at all, so a 100-average scorer and an 88-average scorer can spend the same three visits on nought. That compresses the gap between a seed and a qualifier far more than a standard leg does, and it is why a best-of-three-sets opener against someone like Heta or Chisnall is a genuine hazard rather than a formality.
Prize money up by £150,000
The World Grand Prix is one of four PDC premier events — alongside the UK Open, the European Championship and the Players Championship Finals — moving to a £750,000 prize fund in 2026. The champion in Leicester collects £150,000, up from the £120,000 Littler earned last year out of a £600,000 pot. It sits inside a season-wide PDC increase of £7 million.
What Littler is chasing
Only three players have ever won this tournament more than once, and the gap between the top of that list and everyone else is the widest of any PDC major.
Taylor, van Gerwen and Wade are the only players to have won the event more than once. Source: PDC Roll of Honour.
A second title would put Littler into that group as the fourth multiple winner. It would also keep alive the clean sweep of major titleshe has been chasing across 2026 — a run that no player, Taylor included, has ever completed in a single year.
How the field was picked
The 32 places split evenly. The top 16 of the Order of Merit go in as seeds; the other 16 come from the one-year ProTour Order of Merit, counting only players not already through. That is why the draw contains no seed-versus-seed ties in round one, and why a qualifier such as Woodhouse or Bialecki can land a world top-four opponent immediately.
It also means the double-start rule bites hardest on exactly the players least used to it. You can follow the qualifying picture on the live World Grand Prix Race, and read the full rules of the format in our World Grand Prix format explainer.
When it starts
The tournament runs from Monday 28 September to Sunday 4 October at the Mattioli Arena. First-round matches are the best of three sets, rising to the best of nine by the final — a stretch that has historically punished players who rely on scoring power alone.