Pretty darned good year all round for Wade, who's got himself back up into the top ten after some solid major performances which will have thrown him into Premier League conversations. James, like so many players, has hit a Littler shaped wall, and did so in the first three majors of the year. That said, if two of those were finals, you're probably not going to be that concerned. Wade had a moderately easy run to the final day of the UK Open, where he got a deciding leg win against Luke Humphries and demolished Josh Rock, but ran out of steam and was heavily routed by Littler. At the Matchplay, Wade took advantage of an early defeat for Humphries, cruising past Cullen and Nijman, before nicking a close one against van Veen and an even closer one against Clayton which went into added time - of course, he lost to Littler, but 18-13 with a 101 average is pretty respectable. He'd go out early at the Grand Prix and Slam, losing in the first round to Cullen and not being able to recover from a shock group defeat to Stefan Bellmont, but the other two events were quarter final runs, finally getting the better of Littler in Dortmund only to lose to Humphries in the next round (tough draw eh), while his Players Championship Finals path was relatively comfortable until he clashed against Jermaine Wattimena, who won by the odd break. His European Tour form was solid, reaching four semi finals including three in back to back events, losing them to Littler, Anderson, Rock and Humphries not leaving much on the table, and while he did skip a fair few Pro Tour events, he did win one of them, running out a convincing winner over Scott Williams in Leicester in June, and backed that up with five further trips to the quarter final stages. He's playing at a better level than he has done in several years with a style that makes him pretty hard to beat, more so in leg play than set play, but will still be a danger to do some damage here as he will look to end a run of three straight early defeats on the worlds stage.
Azemoto will make his return here twelve months after making his debut, which saw him take Wesley Plaisier to a deciding set in a scrappy match, just coming out of it on the wrong side. Ryusei ended up fourth in the Asian Tour rankings to seal his return, claiming three titles on that tour, the most notable one being in Kuala Lumpur where he managed a staggering 111 average in the final. Azemoto has been pretty hit and miss on that tour - his overall averages were barely in the top 20 (and even if we added a reasonable matched played requirement, they wouldn't be in the top ten), and while he did win some events and go deep in quite a few others, there were a fair few early defeats playing some bang average stuff. In the Asian Championship he got through the group stage and won his first knockout game but would lose to Paul Lim in the quarter finals, while he did get some TV experience through playing in the World Cup, where after beating the seeded Croatia team, they only needed to beat Switzerland to advance to the knockouts (or get to a deciding leg to force some sort of tiebreaker), they lost 4-1. Ryusei surprisingly didn't take part in the Steel Darts Japan tour, which might have given useful extra experience, but he has dabbled in some WDF events, winning the Selangor Open, although that's only a bronze ranked event. Maybe against some other opponents Azemoto would have a fighting chance, but this is a bad match up for someone who's probably going to need that sixth visit to win legs more often than not.
Ricky Evans will make an eleventh appearance here having just crept back into the world's top 40 following a moderately successful season. Ricky, best known for bangers of shirts and quick play more than actual results, made it two years in a row with a deep TV run, getting to the quarter finals of the Grand Slam. Qualifying through the tour card holder qualifier, Evans won deciding legs against Gerwyn Price and Stefan Bellmont to qualify for the knockouts with a match to spare (so the loss to possible second round opponent Wade was a dead rubber), then in the knockouts he just outlasted Luke Woodhouse to reach that quarter final. Price would win the rematch comfortably, but that result was a big bonus after after a fairly early loss at the Masters (beat Sedlacek, lost to Menzies) and similar at the UK Open (beat Clemens, lost to Chisnall). To get into anything else would need some form at lower levels, and it wasn't really there. Making three European Tour events, Ricky picked up a win against Barney in one event, then made the final day in Hildesheim, beating a tough pairing in Cullen and Rock prior to losing to Chisnall in the last sixteen. The Pro Tour saw just a single quarter final, but at least he didn't have the big losing streak he had towards the end of last year at any point, getting enough to make Minehead with a fair bit of room to spare, but drawing Danny Noppert and losing in the first round. Evans has a solid record here, but reaching the third round for a third straight year might be a tough ask.
Leung made a debut here two years ago, which saw him make a terrific comeback against Gian van Veen prior to a loss to Gabriel Clemens. He returns after a moderately successful Asian Tour campaign, finishing just outside the top five in the rankings but high enough to book a return here. On that Asian Tour, Leung picked up a pair of wins and three final defeats, the last final coming in the final event of the season but the other four coming somewhat earlier on. This got him into the Asian Championship, coming through the groups and winning the opening knockout game prior to a loss to Sakai in the quarter final stages. He was one half of the Hong Kong team at the World Cup which got the dream draw of the USA and Bahrain, winning both group games and then beating Sweden in the knockout stages tp get through to the quarter finals, where they would lose to Wales. There's not much else I can see that happened in 2025, he didn't get a pick for the Bahrain stop of the World Series and I can't see any WDF events either. Still pretty young (has some Dev Tour data in my database), he's got a pretty decent peak game, so could give Ricky some issues if he shows up.
Cammy's now full time on the darts, and will come into the tournament as a seeded player for the first time, looking to improve on last year's surprise early exit to Leonard Gates. The floor has been just fine - picking up a second title in April with a big win over Peter Wright, this coming just after a final defeat and a semi final run in the previous two events, and he'd already won through to another final earlier in the season in Rosmalen. After that however, Menzies didn't really threaten the scorers, he did pick up seven board wins, but couldn't take any of them further than the last sixteen stages. The European Tour was fine, although again he didn't look like actually improving to win at that higher level, getting to a pair of quarter finals and winning past the seed on four other occasions, he'd beat the likes of Heta, de Decker, Wade, Bunting, Cross and Ross Smith over the course of the season, but the quarters remains the limits of what he's done on that tour and both quarter final defeats saw Cameron put in mediocre performances. On TV, he got himself into the Masters main draw with a win over van Veen and would beat Chisnall to move to the second round where he lost heavily to Nathan Aspinall, and he reached a new best of round five in the UK Open after beating Dom Taylor and Mike de Decker, before losing a decider to James Wade. A Matchplay debut saw a real disappointing loss to Danny Noppert, but he rebounded with a quarter final run in Leicester, eliminating Dobey and Cross before running into Luke Humphries. The end of the season would be a bit of a slow down however, Dortmund was solid with a win over Anderson and nearly eliminating Humphries but losing a deciding leg, but he'd miss the Slam and lose his opening game at Minehead 6-1 to Adam Lipscombe. Absolutely a dangerous player who can match up well with anyone, but also a player who can go completely missing, make bizarre counting errors, and everything in between.
Charlie Manby's an incredibly exciting prospect, who makes his debut here having been around the Development Tour for some time, but exploding in form in 2025, who made a lot of headlines earlier in the season when he hit some absurd average (over four legs) on that tour. Charlie finished fourth in the rankings, only behind Greaves and two tour card holders, doing so by picking up a title in September, a further final earlier in the season, and multiple runs to the quarter and semi final stages. This got him to the world youth championship, where he got to the last sixteen and forced Luke Littler to a deciding eleventh leg with over a hundred average. Charlie didn't just play the Dev Tour however, he got into the top 30 of the Challenge Tour, peaking at a pair of semi finals, which would be just enough to get him into a handful of Pro Tour events, picking up the scalps of Rob Cross and Andrew Gilding. Manby was in that weird World Masters group that had just two players, losing to Ryan Meikle, and having also got into the UK Open through the previous year's Dev Tour, there he'd lose his opening game to Aden Kirk. He didn't quite get enough on the Development Tour this year to win a tour card, but is certainly capable of announcing his arrival on the senior circuit here and now, and will surely be one of the names to watch at Q-School early in the new year.
Campbell will make his seventh straight appearance here, having a best run of round three where he eliminated James Wade prior to hitting the debuting Littler two years ago. Getting here through the Pro Tour, Matt's not had the greatest of seasons, but there were sporadic highlights, the main one probably being the retention of his North American Championship, where as the top seed he defeated Jason Brandon and Stowe Buntz, before winning the final against fellow Canadian Jim Long. He couldn't use the worlds spot that had on offer due to PDC rules, but did enough on the Pro Tour to make another appearance and give himself a half chance of retaining his tour card for 2026. That's a touch surprising given what he actually did on the floor - he had a pretty torrid time, racking up twenty first round defeats in the first 28 events he played, but ironically finished off with a pair of board wins in the last two events having not won one all year (and only getting to that stage twice in the first place). He's always seemed a better stage player however, and on the Euro Tour he did more damage, qualifying for four seems about right, but he got past the seed in three of them, beating Peter Wright (and interestingly Cameron Menzies in the first round), Stephen Bunting, and then in Leverkusen he'd beat both Ross Smith and James Wade to reach a quarter final, narrowly losing to eventual finalist Damon Heta. Matt repeated a career best fourth round appearance at the UK Open with a win over Nathan Girvan, but couldn't convert in what looked like a winnable game against Alan Soutar, while Darius Labanauskas would knock him out relatively early in the World Masters. Very capable at his best, we've just not seen that much of it in 2025.
Matt will face Adam Sevada in an all North American clash, the American having a breakout year in 2025 to qualify for a world championship for the first time. Sevada did this with a very fast start on the CDC circuit, winning four events back to back, adding a fifth later in the season, to finish top of the CDC rankings and book his spot here outright. This gave him entry into a few of their other events, the one that most viewers will have seen being the US Darts Masters, where he put in a poor showing against Gerwyn Price, but aside from that Adam made the semi final of the Cross Border Challenge (losing to Leonard Gates), got into the North American championship but would lose in the opening round to Jim Long (so a common opponent given Campbell beat him later in the event), and would also reach the semi finals of the Continental Cup, narrowly losing to eventual champion Alex Spellman. He did pop across for the World Masters, beating Martijn Dragt but losing to Karel Sedlacek, and hopefully he'll return for that next year and maybe give Q-School and some of the other early events a go. He's looking alright domestically, but lack of performances in limited stage experience could be a worry.
I think I've got to go for Wade here. First round shouldn't be any problem, and I think he should be too steady for Evans, who I'm thinking will just have a bit too much firepower for Leung, although that's not a guarantee. Menzies against Manby is an interesting one. Charlie clearly has massive potential and upside, having the peak game that can match up with Menzies' peak game, which I'm not even sure we'll see. It wouldn't surprise me if he pulled the upset here, and I think whoever wins that one would have the edge over Campbell, who I think despite meh form is a better talent than Sevada. James has just done enough this year however that I think he gets a run going. Winner - James Wade
Gian van Veen's made the biggest breakthrough of anyone this season, going from having no senior title to winning a Pro Tour to winning a major title in the European Championship, a not unexpected rise but still a very sharp one and getting the major title was perhaps a tad quicker than many thought. In that event, van Veen defeated Damon Heta, Ryan Searle and Ryan Joyce with few problems, got past Michael van Gerwen 11-9 in the semi final before surviving a match dart to claim the title against Luke Humphries. It's a huge achievement that cements his place amongst the world's elite, but not the only thing of note. Prior to that, Gian made new bests of quarter finals in the UK Open and Matchplay, with a near 110 average against Heta in the former, a match which went the distance, and a win over Humphries in the Matchplay. He drew Littler at Leicester and had a very tough Slam group which he couldn't get out of, but would beat Humphries again at Minehead before a bit of a surprise defeat to Krzysztof Ratajski. Gian made a second Euro Tour final, coming up short against van Gerwen, but finished that season very strongly with three semi finals in the last four events, only being stopped by Rock, Bunting and Aspinall. van Veen would also retain his world youth championship, becoming only the second player to do so after Dimitri van den Bergh, would make a World Cup debut, reaching the semi finals with Danny Noppert, and continued to look strong on the floor, picking up his first title with a dominant win against Luke Humphries a day after making a third career final where he fell just short against Joe Cullen, and would later add a further final where Gerwyn Price emerged victorious. Two semi finals, five quarter finals and a further five board victories shows great consistency at the Pro Tour level. He surely has to be in discussion for the Premier League, but may need a solid run here to avoid any sort of "is it too early" questions as we've seen for many younger players in the past. For me it isn't.
Cristo Reyes makes a surprise and welcome return to the world stage, ending a five year absence after winning the Mediterranean qualifier to make the field. Reyes, who's previously made the last sixteen at this event, returns having beaten former card holder Jesus Noguera and current card holder Michele Turetta along the way, before claiming a 7-4 win against Ricardo Perez to get back here. The numbers he was putting up on stage were very good, almost as if he was back at his best, breaking the ton barrier on at least one occasion. Really kind of hard to say where he's at beyond that, following losing his tour card in 2021 he's basically been completely off the radar, trying to get his card back at 2022 Q-School but not managing it. All we can really do is look at the numbers and see how they match up with how we know he could play - he's been good enough before to get into the seeding spots for here, has done enough to qualify for the Matchplay, and has been to the last sixteen of multiple majors. You don't do that by accident, and if he is to show up and play like he did in the qualifier, then he does stand a chance, although clearly it's a horrible draw for him.
Alan Soutar comes back for a fourth appearance here, managing two back to back last sixteen appearances in his first two efforts which saw him creep into the top 32 at one point, but missed 2024 and lost in the opening round to Kai Gotthardt last season, so will look to rectify that after finishing around the middle of the Pro Tour standings, staying safely the right side of the tour card cutoff for now. On the floor, Alan took a while to get going, not losing too many early matches but not progressing particularly deep either, and it would take until June where he had good back to back days of a board win and a first quarter final of the season, a stage he would match in consecutive days in Milton Keynes in August, before form tailed off somewhat with six first round exits in the last nine events of the season. That accumulation was enough to book a Players Championship Finals spot with a fair bit of safety, but he couldn't get that far up the rankings and while a draw of Luke Woodhouse was by no means the worst he could have got, he was still a clear second best. Europe was a struggle, only getting through the qualifiers to make a pair of events, losing to Cameron Menzies and Matt Campbell in the opening round in them. He couldn't get much going at the Masters, being on the wrong end of William Borland's surprise run, but did have a bit of a good tournament at the UK Open, not matching his previous best but whitewashing Callan Rydz and coming out the better against Matt Campbell on this occasion, then giving Jonny Clayton a bit of a run for his money but ending up losing 10-7. Alan is a winner on the Pro Tour from 2024 and has made a big quarter final in the Grand Slam in the past, but looks a bit off that level right now.
Teemu Harju will be making his first appearance here, being one of a number of players who made big improvements from previously on a secondary tour, having shown up in a few of the Nordic events last year but making strides in 2025. His qualification comes from winning the inaugural Nordic and Baltic Championship, where coming in as the second seed he beat Par Riihonen, card holder Cor Dekker, Johan Engstrom and then won the final heavily against Edwin Torbjornsson, averaging in the mid 90's as he came out the 8-2 victor. Harju didn't actually need this win to qualify, as he just scraped home into second on the Nordic and Baltic Tour, losing one final early but winning two others, notably the last one to draw level with Oskar Lukasiak on cash but claim the place on countback. Harju reached the quarter finals or better in nine of the twelve events, and in those weekends he was also able to win through to a pair of European Tour events - pushing Ryan Joyce fairly hard but coming up short in the first, then not pushing Dirk van Duijvenbode very hard in the second with Dirk winning every leg and averaging over a ton. He played the World Cup with Marko Kantele, but would be stunned by New Zealand (not so much the win, more the 4-0 nature of it) and Argentina, winning just the one leg in the event despite being the seeds in the group, and wasn't quite high enough in the rankings when the Nordic Darts Masters came around to get the call up for that. Maybe next year? Solid enough player and he can't complain too much about this draw.
Dimitri van den Bergh has had a bad 2025. A multiple major winner, including just last year at the UK Open, he's now in a position where a large percentage of his ranking money is going to disappear in a few months and it's hard to say where it will come back from. The season started out alright, with a run to the semi finals of the Masters, with a good trio of wins over Michael van Gerwen, Gary Anderson and Nathan Aspinall, and at the UK Open he'd make a steady run to the last sixteen with wins over Raymond van Barneveld and Chris Dobey, before barely averaging 70 in a heavy loss to Michael Smith. Having not done a great deal on the floor to that point, losing as a seed in the first two European Tour events of the season before getting off the mark in the third against Thibault Tricole (only to be whitewashed next round by Martin Schindler), and having a 3-7 opening round record on the Pro Tour, Dimitri took a break, but would not do much of anything when he did come back. He didn't qualify for another European Tour event all season having dropped from the seeding positions, while his main order of merit ranking slipped from the top 16, so he ended up missing all the majors, the only chances of getting into any being the Grand Slam (where he lost in the qualifier to Joshua Richardson), and the Players Championship Finals, but he couldn't get enough together to make that either - playing in the last eighteen events but losing in the first round in twelve of them. He was technically still live to make it up to the final event, where he made a season's best run to the quarter finals, but a loss to Chris Dobey at that stage would end his chances. It's hard to say if there's something wrong off the oche and I wouldn't like to speculate to that extent, but this is nowhere near the Dimitri of 18-24 months ago.
Darren Beveridge, the man with maybe the best nickname in the sport (after the two better ones were forced to change it by the killjoys), will make a first world championship appearance in the second year of his tour card, and while it seems like way too much to ask for him to save it after a 2024 where he frankly didn't get a lot done, making it here through the Pro Tour rankings (safely in mid table) is at least trending in the right direction and ought to give him some confidence that he can claim it back in January. With steady scoring throughout the year, Darren showed good improvement on the floor, with a little bit of a slow start prior to a couple of board wins in the second quarter of the year, but his best run would come in September, beating the Dutch trio of Klaasen, Noppert and van Veen as well as Ryan Joyce to reach the quarter finals, losing to Ryan Searle. This was steady enough progress to get into the top 64 and hence make Minehead, where he'd run into Ryan Searle again and lose 6-1. He made a single European Tour where he would get a good, if scrappy, win over Wessel Nijman, while in the "everyone plays" majors he went out in the groups in the Masters after losing to Andreas Harrysson, but get a UK Open win over James Hurrell, prior to losing to Justin Hood. He's been around for a while and looks pretty competent all round, as long as the big stage does not completely overwhelm him, there's enough here that he's got a very realistic chance of putting a couple of wins together.
Madars is the Latvian number one who's fallen back a bit from the peak around three years ago where he'd crept into the seedings here and qualified for the tough to get to majors, but is still safely hanging around in the top 50 and will make a seventh straight appearance here and a tenth world championship overall if you include his BDO appearances before switching to the PDC. Razma ended up just above midway in the Pro Tour standings, and will be looking to repeat his third round runs from the last two seasons. There weren't too many major floor successes, he has made more than one Pro Tour final in the past, but the closest he would get is an early semi final run where he would beat two world champions in Michael Smith and Gary Anderson, a third if you include Stephen Bunting, only losing in the semi to Gian van Veen, although that semi wasn't close at all. Aside from that however it was mostly a dry spell, with just a pair of board wins but more first round wins than losses, hence losing in the top 64 or 32 most of the time, which is what his ranking suggests should happen. Razma played in four Euro Tours, the best being the first, where as an alternate he knocked out Danny Noppert to make round three before losing to Peter Wright. He got into two more through the Pro Tour list (not sure how) but lost in the first round in both, and qualified legitimately just once, beating a domestic qualifier to get to Martin Schindler, where he lost. The majors he did play were a mixed bag, he'd lose his first Masters game to Radek Szaganski, but pick up wins in both the Minehead events, getting past Ryan Meikle comfortably and Ricardo Pietreczko just about to get to the second day of the UK Open where he'd keep things relatively close against Michael Smith, while he surprised a lot by turning over Dirk van Duijvenbode just recently, only to then be a distant second best to Danny Noppert. He's always been a tad inconsistent, but if he brings one of the better versions of his game he can get something going here.
Jamai van den Herik is a relatively new name to me, not being completely unknown as there are a couple of Dev Tour runs in my database dating back to 2020, but to get here is virtually out of nowhere. Jamai finished in the top six in both the Development Tour and the Challenge Tour, it being the former that got him here after a couple of people ahead of him in the rankings qualified directly through the Pro Tour. On the Dev Tour, van den Herik did most of his work late, picking up a pair of titles, one each in the fourth and fifth weekends, going on a couple of deepish runs in the first weekend but not really doing that much mid season. The Challenge Tour was somewhat similar, but he got one win in May over Graham Hall and a second in August against Jenson Walker, that second one being straight after he reached a semi final earlier on the same day to show some good stamina levels. These would be enough to see him get to quite a few Pro Tour events, and he started making an immediate impression, winning his first match in each of his first nine appearances, picking up wins against the likes of Damon Heta, Mike de Decker, Wessel Nijman and Cameron Menzies, with a best run being to a quarter final shortly after the Matchplay. His latter season form tailed off a tad, hitting a run of five straight first round losses, but that last one was only a 6-5 loss to Littler which is hardly a negative, and two others were at least deciders. It is really hard to say what he will do on a big stage - at least with many we've seen some sort of previous stage game, but this looks like it will be his first stage game and first major appearance of any description, so how he reacts will be unknown. A lot of the kids simply wouldn't care and just throw darts for sure, but that isn't universal, and it's definitely an open question as to what will happen.
This is the most wide open section, except for one player. Reyes being back and looking good is exciting, but it's a horror draw and van Veen, assuming he doesn't have any weird Ally Pally mental blockages given he's not actually won a game here, should wipe the floor with anyone. Soutar I think will have the experience and course and distance to deal with Harju, and I think we might see the same with Razma over van den Herik. Dimitri however I just don't know, is the confidence there? I think it'll be there with Beveridge. That bottom section is incredibly even and I think you can make a reasonable case for any of the eight permutations of results. I'll go with Madars over Darren, but I won't argue against anyone who says literally anything different. Who goes to the last sixteen might be the most obvious one we've had yet though. Winner - Gian van Veen
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