World Darts Championship 2025 Review

Author: Jack Guing, Last Updated: 09.01.2025

The conclusion of the biggest tournament in the Darts calendar took place over the last couple of weeks with an intriguing tournament seeing 17 year old Luke Littler taking home the Sid Waddel trophy to become the youngest winner of the PDC World Darts Championship. Littler was outstanding on his path to victory, defeating three-time world champion and darting legend Michael Van Gerwen in the final, dominating the match with a 7 sets to 3 win.

It was a tournament that had its twist and turns and changed the landscape of darts. Littler, the new talent, emerged as the world champion. Meanwhile, former champions like Michael Smith saw their world rankings drop significantly after a poor tournament performance. Let’s take a look at this years edition of the World Darts Championship highlighting the shocks seen and the top performances from certain players.

A tournament of shocks

The 2025 World Darts Championship was filled with shocks, particularly in the early rounds. Round 2 is when the seeds (those ranked from 1 to 32) entered the tournament and this is when the shocks really began to take place. A record 14 seeds crashed out of the PDC World Darts Championship in the opening two rounds. Former world champion and 2nd seed Michael Smith was arguably the biggest shock of round 2. Smith suffered a 2-3 defeat to Kevin Doets to eliminate him and see him plummet down the rankings, falling to 16th in the world. Five time world champion Raymond Van Barneveld was beaten by Welshman Nick Kenny on a scoreline of 1-3.

The shocks continued when 5th seed Rob Cross and 6th seed Dave Chisnall were defeated by Scott Williams and Ricky Evans respectively on score lines of 1-3 and 2-3. The shocks continued into the tournament with world number 1 and pre tournament favourite Luke Humphries being eliminated in the Last 16 versus Peter Wright. Wright is a former two time world champion but came into the tournament with little form, and was not expected to defeat “Cool Hand” Luke Humphries especially on a scoreline of 1-4.

Two 9 Darters

The 2025 World Darts Championship saw two 9 darters that made Alexandra Palace go crazy. Christian Kist hit the competition's first nine dart finish in his first round defeat to Madars Razma at the PDC World Darts Championship. The Dutchman was eliminated from the competition after a 3-1 loss but made history by achieving a nine-darter, earning £60,000 in the process. Additionally, the same amount was donated to Prostate Cancer UK and awarded to one member of the crowd at Alexandra Palace. Australian Damon Heta also achieved a perfect leg of darts in his Round 3 match with Luke Woodhouse. Heta would also go on to lose this match, putting a damper on his achievement of a perfect leg.

Littler seized his moment

Luke Littler became the youngest winner of the PDC World Darts Championship at the age of 17 when he defeated Michael Van Gerwen 7-3 in the final. Littler’s run to the final saw him defeat Ryan Meikle in round 2 and Ian White in round 3 by comfortable margins of 3-1 and 4-1. His first big test came in the last 16 versus Ryan Joyce. Joyce put in a valiant effort sending it to a last set decider, with Littler producing brilliant darts in the final set to win 4-3. In the quarter final and semi finals he really started to show his quality dispatching of Nathan Aspinall 5-1 in the quarter final and Stephen Bunting 6-2 in the semi final.

These performances made Littler the heavy favourite going into the final despite taking on one of the greatest players of all time, 3 time world champion Michael Van Gerwen. Littler would produce a dominant final performance, averaging 102.73, having a checkout success rate of 55.56% and winning 25 legs to Van Gerwen’s 14. Littler showed in his 7-3 win that he is the clear future of darts and could dominate the sport for years to come.

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