Updated 16:05 17 Jul 2025 GMT+1Published 15:59 17 Jul 2025 GMT+1

Darts fans left confused after noticing huge change to World Championships schedule

The PDC World Darts Championship gets underway on December as Luke Littler looks to defend his title.

Luke Davies

Fans have spotted a huge schedule change ahead of this year’s PDC World Darts Championship.

Luke Littler won the 2024/25 edition of the competition and alongside Luke Humphries will head into this year’s tournament as one of the favourites.

On Thursday July 17, the PDC announced the schedule for the competition which will run from Thursday December 11 to the final on Saturday January 3 at Alexandra Palace.

The 2025/26 edition will include 128 players - including a minimum of four women - with a combined record prize pot of £5m on offer.

The top 40 players from the PDC Order of Merit on the back of November’s Players Championship Finals will qualify automatically for the World Darts Championship.

Last month, the PDC confirmed a change to the schedule as seeds now have to play an extra round due to the expanded field of competitors.

This year, all players will begin at the first-round stage.

So, 32 seeded players and players ranked 33-64 will be drawn at random into the left hand side of the draw against the remaining 64 qualifiers.

"The expansion of the tournament will provide players from the PDC's global affiliate tours and secondary tours with further opportunities to compete on the sport's biggest stage," a statement from the PDC released in June read.

"This will include a minimum of four women in the 128-player field."

And fans were quick to give their thoughts on the change via social media.

One said: “That’ll be interesting, even bigger upsets! And more importantly even more games. As long as my favourites don’t go out early I’ll be happy.”

Another added: “Disappointed that there's no boxing day darts miss the days when darts used to be on on boxing day.”

A third explained: "Should also mean at least 1 player in the top 16 playing in every first-round session. Should just about be enough to make every session interesting with some of the bad stuff we're going to get early on.”