World Grand Prix Darts Format Explained: The Only Double-Start Event on Tour

Double In, Double Out

The World Grand Prix is the only double-start tournament on the PDC Tour: players must hit a double, or the bullseye, before any of their darts count towards their score in that leg. A player stuck throwing at the outer ring of a double board is on zero no matter how many 180s they land elsewhere — nothing counts until the double lands, and the value of that double becomes their first scoring throw. Every leg is finished on a double too, exactly as in standard PDC play, so the tournament is effectively double in, double out from the very first dart.

That single change roughly doubles the number of doubles a player has to hit across a match compared with a normal 501 leg, and it punishes cold starts far more harshly than any other PDC event — a missed double at the start of a leg can mean throwing two or three visits before a single point is on the board.

Where the Format Came From

The tournament was introduced in 1998, replacing the World Pairs event that had run from 1995 to 1997, and Phil Taylor won the inaugural title. The double-start concept has been the event’s defining feature from that first staging, though the surrounding format has shifted over the years — the 1999 edition briefly used a group stage before the tournament settled into the straight knockout, set-play structure used today.

A 32-Player Field

The modern World Grand Prix field is 32 players, made up of the top 16 on the main PDC Order of Merit together with the next 16 highest-ranked players on the PDC ProTour Order of Merit who have not already qualified through the top 16. That gives it a slightly different look to a standard Players Championship field — every player involved has already proven themselves over the rolling ranking window, unlike an open-entry ProTour event.

Set Play, Not Straight Legs

Unlike the best-of-legs format used at most ProTour events, the World Grand Prix is played entirely in sets. Every set is the best of five legs — first to three legs wins the set — and the number of sets needed to win a match increases as the tournament progresses:

The jump from a best-of-three-sets opener to a best-of-nine-sets final means the tournament gets progressively harder to survive on a single hot patch of scoring — later rounds reward players who can maintain their doubling accuracy over a much longer contest.

2025: Littler’s First Grand Prix Title

The 2025 World Grand Prix was held at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester, with a total prize fund of £600,000 and £120,000 going to the winner. Luke Littler beat Luke Humphries 6-1 in the final to claim his first World Grand Prix title, adding the double-start event to his growing list of major honours.

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