Which records will players checkout at the World Darts Championship 2026?
For sports fans, Christmas has arrived when they finally see the players take to the Alexandra Palace stage for the beginning of the World Darts Championship.
In 2025, we saw Luke Littler (UK) become the youngest winner of the PDC World Darts Championship at the age of just 17 years and 348 days – and since he once again is the youngest player in the tournament – there’s no chance of that being broken this year.
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However, what other records could tumble in North London in an expanded world championship event?
With 128 players, increased from the 96 who performed last year, the chances of the most 180s in a PDC World Darts Championship massively increases.
There will be 127 matches compared to 95, meaning 2023’s record-setting total of 901 180’s is set to be beaten.
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Somebody who can break their own record is the legendary ‘Singapore Slinger’ Paul Lim, who is set to make his first appearance at Alexandra Palace since the 2022 Championship.
In that year, he became the oldest person to play in the PDC World Darts Championship at the age of 67 years and 326 days.
He does face a tricky fixture in the first round on Saturday 13 December against Jeffrey de Graaf and then a likely second round tie against former champion Luke Humphries makes the odds slim for Lim to advance to the later rounds.
He’s been featuring in world championship darts since 1981, reaching the semi-finals of the BDO World Championship in 1990 and the final of the WDF World Darts Championship in 2024. He has not reached a last 16 of a PDC premier event since 2001.
He will forever hold the record of hitting the first World Championship nine-dart finish in 1990 against Jack McKenna.
Other records to look out for include the highest three-dart average at the PDC World Darts Championship set by Michael van Gerwen (The Netherlands) in 2017 with 114.05, the same match in which Raymond Van Barneveld had the highest losing match average with 109.34.
Also, fans would love to see the most players to score a televised nine-dart finish in a single day, first set back on 14 December 2013 by Terry Jenkins and the late Kyle Anderson.
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