SPORTS fans are in for a very merry footballdartsmas this year after the schedule for the Darts World Championship was released.
The PDC have expanded the tournament to 128 players for the 2025/26 edition of the Alexandra Palace showpiece.
PAThe PDC have revealed the schedule for the 2025/26 Darts World Championship[/caption]
AlamyThe competition has been expanded with more players, more money and more fans[/caption]
This comes with a record-breaking prize pot of £5million on the line, with this year’s winner set to pocket an eye-watering £1m.
And the schedule for the expanded competition has now been revealed by organisers.
It will be a 20-day darts bonanza held across 36 sessions which is expected to welcome more than 100,000 fans.
The likes of Luke Littler and Luke Humphries will have to wait to discover their fate in the draw, but they know the round one action will get underway from Thursday, December 11.
Round one will last over a week through to Friday, December 19, with every day except for the opening day and Wednesday, December 17 featuring an afternoon and evening session.
Those who progress will then commence with the second round from Saturday, December 20, which will be played through to Tuesday, December 23 when the competition then takes a break for Christmas.
The darts then return with round three action on Saturday, December 27.
That will last through to Monday, December 29, when three round three clashes play out at the same time as two round four games.
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The remainder of round four will be played out across two sessions on Tuesday, December 30.
Similarly, the quarter-finals will take place across an afternoon and evening session on New Year’s Day.
Friday, January 2 will see the semi-finals played out, before the darts festival then concludes on Saturday, January 3.
Fans have called the tournament a “a mind-melting amount of darts”.
However, fans could be hard-pressed to get tickets as the popularity of darts continues to soar.
A record 40,000 were bought by annual members in the first 30 minutes of pre-sale for the event last year.
The PDC website struggled to cope with the traffic and some fans fumed as they got stuck on a “black screen”.
Other fans were left furious after touts got their hands on tickets before reselling them on some sites for a colossal £800.
List of all-time Darts World Champions
BELOW is a list of darts world champions by year.
The list does not include winners from the pre-Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) era or BDO world champions.
That means Raymond van Barneveld, for example, is only listed once – Barney also won four BDO titles – and none of Eric Bristow’s five BDO titles are included.
1994 – Dennis Priestley
1995 – Phil Taylor
1996 – Phil Taylor (2)
1997 – Phil Taylor (3)
1998 – Phil Taylor (4)
1999 – Phil Taylor (5)
2000 – Phil Taylor (6)
2001 – Phil Taylor (7)
2002 – Phil Taylor (8)
2003 – John Part
2004 – Phil Taylor (9)
2005 – Phil Taylor (10)
2006 – Phil Taylor (11)
2007 – Raymond van Barneveld
2008 – John Part (2)
2009 – Phil Taylor (12)
2010 – Phil Taylor (13)
2011 – Adrian Lewis
2012 – Adrian Lewis (2)
2013 – Phil Taylor (14)
2014 – Michael van Gerwen
2015 – Gary Anderson
2016 – Gary Anderson (2)
2017 – Michael van Gerwen (2)
2018 – Rob Cross
2019 – Michael van Gerwen (3)
2020 – Peter Wright
2021 – Gerwyn Price
2022 – Peter Wright (2)
2023 – Michael Smith
2024 – Luke Humphries
2025 – Luke Littler
Most World Titles
14 – Phil Taylor
3 – Michael van Gerwen
2 – John Part, Adrian Lewis, Gary Anderson, Peter Wright
1 – Dennis Priestley, Raymond van Barneveld, Rob Cross, Gerwyn Price, Michael Smith, Luke Humphries, Luke Littler
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