Luke Littler will miss the 2026 Players Championship Finals after largely sitting out the floor circuit this year. From 2027, the PDC's planned overhaul of Minehead could make that kind of consequence much easier for the biggest names to avoid.
The PDC's newly announced calendar includes another 34 Players Championship events, while the season-ending Finals are reportedly set for a much bigger overhaul, with the field expected to double from 64 to 128 players alongside a multi-board format and changes to the qualification system. It was enough for Samuel Gill to open the latest Hot Seat on the DartsNews Podcast with a direct question to Nicolas Gayer: "Is Luke Littler getting a backdoor entry into the Players Championship Finals by going to 128 players?"
Littler started his 2026 Players Championship campaign from £0 on the dedicated Order of Merit with only eight tournaments remaining and a place in the top 64 required to reach Minehead. He gave himself a late route in by finally appearing at PC27 and PC28, but then withdrew from the following double-header and will not be there when the Finals take place. "I think you can absolutely not blame anyone that argues that way or thinks that way," Gayer said. "We've seen it over the last couple of years. The easiest events to skip for the big guys, for the big guns, are the floor events. Those are the first events they are opting not to play when they are choosing to slim down their calendar a bit."
Littler is hardly alone in managing his schedule. Michael van Gerwen has also cut back on floor events at different points, while the very best players already have Premier League nights, World Series trips, European Tours and the major calendar taking up large parts of the year. Gill understands why those players pick and choose, but questioned whether doubling the Minehead field will make that choice even easier. "If I was a big-name darts player, if I was Luke Humphries, if I was Michael van Gerwen, if I was whoever, I would play those first few and then just not bother for the rest of the season," he said. "I'd just say, 'Well, I'm in Minehead now. It's job done.'"
Littler's selective schedule has cost him Minehead in 2026. If the 2027 format works as reported, doing enough early in the year before stepping away from the floor could carry far less risk. With the elite increasingly selective about floor events, Gill suggested the PDC may be trying to find a middle ground that still gets the biggest names into enough ranking tournaments without expecting them to play everything. "I think it's their way of trying to make them play a bit more," he said. "They're saying, 'We want you at these events, but we know you're not going to turn up to the bread and butter, so we're going to try and make it so that you have to turn up and that you get a semi-easier pass, but that you don't have to play everything in the year.'"
Earlier this year, Barry Hearn defended the current Premier League format with the familiar argument that if something is not broken, there is little reason to fix it. Gayer sees a clear contrast with the PDC now making major changes to a tournament he had heard very few supporters calling to overhaul. "I think if you speak to darts fans all over the world, you will find a lot of arguments for the Premier League actually being broken in the current format," he said. "Whereas I've not really heard anyone speak about the Players Championship Finals needing fixing and still they've just changed like 50% of the whole tournament structure."
The Players Championship Finals are not the only part of the 2027 calendar changing. The European Championship will also expand, while the new European Open in Salzburg adds another major to an already packed schedule, with Gayer questioning whether that continued expansion risks narrowing some of the differences between the sport's biggest tournaments. "When I grew up, I think commentators, experts, pundits, they always spoke about the fact that in darts the greatest thing is that every major tournament is very unique," he said. "You have a very unique way of qualification for every tournament, a unique format for every tournament."
The World Grand Prix still has double-start, the UK Open still has its open draw and multiple boards, and the Grand Slam has traditionally relied on a qualification route unlike anything else on the calendar. "I think the current trend or direction we are heading in leads to all the tournaments becoming a bit more similar because they are widening up the tournaments," Gayer said. "They are easing qualification criteria quite a lot. There's a direction we are heading in that I don't really like."
Late withdrawals from major names have already repeatedly frustrated European Tour supporters who may only get one chance each year to watch the PDC's biggest stars in their own country, something Gayer has heard directly while travelling to events. "You speak to those people in Graz or in Budapest or wherever, in Austria and Switzerland, and it's a fact," he said. "They only have this one event a year and then they are buying tickets months early. They are of course looking forward to seeing their favourite players and they often don't get to see them."
Gill picked up the same point from the promotional side, with the biggest names often pushed heavily in the build-up to European Tour weekends even though the final field can look very different by the time the event arrives. "All these big names are always on the poster in places like Budapest, Prague, etc," he said. "They'll always have Gerwyn Price, they'll always have Michael van Gerwen on the poster and then if half of them turn up, what's the point?"
If broader qualification routes allow the leading players to get what they need from only a handful of appearances, one strong European Tour weekend or a few decent Players Championship results could be enough to secure a place at the major at the end of the road, leaving little reason to keep playing once qualification is effectively taken care of. Gary Anderson was one example raised in the discussion. Under the wider qualification picture being debated, a run such as his European Tour final defeat to Ross Smith could potentially do much of the work required for European Championship qualification without demanding a full campaign afterwards. "I think it's just a bit stale," Gill said. "They need to almost reverse it and make it more tough to get players into tournaments."
The calendar is crowded, the leading players cannot realistically play everything and bigger fields do create more opportunities for Tour Card holders further down the rankings. But if qualification becomes easier while the incentive to keep playing the circuits beneath those majors weakens, the PDC may find that solving one scheduling problem creates another.
