Luke Littler's aspirations of achieving a historic clean sweep of every PDC major title in 2026 are encountering a serious obstacle. The world number one has already secured some of the biggest trophies in darts this year, including the World Championship, UK Open, World Masters, Premier League, and World Cup of Darts. However, his chances of qualifying for the Players Championship Finals are now under threat after he withdrew from the first 22 Players Championship events of the season, leaving himself with little margin for error in the coming months.
Players Championship Finals Hopes Take a Major Hit
Littler still has several major titles to pursue this year, including the World Matchplay, World Series Finals, World Grand Prix, European Championship, Grand Slam of Darts, and Players Championship Finals. The biggest concern revolves around the Players Championship Finals in Minehead. Despite being the defending champion, Littler has made his task difficult by missing the first 22 Players Championship events of the season.
He now has only 11 floor tournaments left to accumulate enough prize money to secure qualification. Speaking on the Love the Darts Podcast, former professional player Matt Edgar stated that Littler's path will not be straightforward. “I’d like to see him absolutely do the clean sweep, but you make a great point in regard to the fact that you can get caught out, especially on things like the ProTour. If we think about the people who have beaten Luke in ranking competitive games this year, Niels Zonneveld, that’s pretty much it. You wouldn’t predict that at the start of the year, and you wouldn’t predict it now.”
Matt Edgar Explains Why Littler Remains Vulnerable in Shorter Formats
Although Littler has dominated many of the sport's biggest events, Edgar believes that shorter-format tournaments can still produce surprises. He pointed to Littler's defeat against Beau Greaves in the World Youth Championship semi-finals as evidence that even the best players can be stopped on a given day.
Edgar added: “So absolutely, you can get caught out. He does get caught out on the ProTours, he’s been caught out many times. The Youth Championship is a great example. All 128 players are there for a reason. They’ve all qualified, they’ve all earned that right, coming through very, very tough fields. We are looking at the best players in the world. Of course, someone can put in a big performance for 15 minutes, because that’s all it is.”
“We’re talking about 15 minutes of darts. Now, when you look over someone’s career and you go, well, they’ve hit a 108 average, why aren’t they going to do it in this game? The likelihood is they don’t, but it can happen, and it does happen.”
Edgar also stressed that any player can produce a match-winning display in a short contest and warned that Littler is running out of opportunities. “It sounds easy, doesn’t it? Just turn up and win that. But it’s not as simple. He’s running out of time if he’s going to be there.”
