Two-time world champion Luke Littler can still qualify for the Players Championship Finals in Minehead – but what else can he win?

His unprecedented 12-month clean sweep may be over following a crushing 10-4 defeat by Jonny Clayton in the quarter-finals of the World Series of Darts Finals in Amsterdam and a shock first-round exit at the World Grand Prix, but he can still qualify for next month’s Players Championship Finals.

The world No 1 had won the first six premier events of the season following his World Championship triumph at Alexandra Palace in January with the World Masters, UK Open, Premier League, World Cup of Darts and World Matchplay.

He had been hoping to add the World Series of Darts Finals, World Grand Prix, European Championship, Grand Slam of Darts and Players Championship Finals trophies to complete a historic clean sweep of the year. But his bid was derailed by Clayton, who reeled off seven of the final eight legs to defeat the teenager before overcoming Luke Woodhouse in Leicester, where he suffered a 2-1 defeat in the double-in, double-out tournament.

At the weekend, 19-year-old Littler was beaten by Cam Crabtree in the semi-finals of the World Youth Championship.

Had he gone on to win the title, Littler would have become the first player to hold both the World Championship and World Youth titles.

The final will take place on Sunday, November 29, in Minehead as part of the Players Championship Finals, a tournament Littler won last year but has yet to qualify for this time around.

With just two floor events remaining before the Players Championship Finals, Littler can still earn enough prize money to qualify for the tournament – but will he make the trip to Leicester on November 4 and 5?

The top 64 players on the ProTour Order of Merit qualify for the Minehead showpiece, with the projected cut-off expected to exceed £30,000 after all 34 events. Littler currently sits in 126th place with £10,500, while Mike De Decker occupies the final qualifying spot in 64th with £29,250.

That leaves ‘The Nuke’ with a slim route into Minehead, but he would likely need to reach the final of at least one – and potentially both – of the final two ProTour events to force his way into the field.

Littler won the 2025 title, defeating Nathan Aspinall 11-8 in the final.

Speaking on the Love The Darts podcast, Matt Edgar believes Littler is unlikely to compete in the final two ProTour events of the season

“There is an opportunity here to be undisputed champion of the world – to own both of those world championships in the PDC. Playing in the World Youth Championship was an interesting decision. I didn’t think he would make it, but I’m kind of glad he did,” said Edgar.

“I also think there’s a big misunderstanding about what that tournament was because there were people suggesting that maybe he shouldn’t have been there. This isn’t the Development Tour Finals. This was a world championship, and I don’t ever want to exist in a world of sport where someone is excluded from a world championship for being too good.

“I’m glad he went to the World Youth Championship, but I think if he had got to the final, then maybe we would have seen him at the ProTours. There’s no point going all the way down to Minehead if you’re not going to play the Players Championship Finals as well.

“I think he would [have played the final two ProTour events] had he got into the World Youth final, but I think now it’s off the cards.”

Players Championship prize money

• Second round: £1,250

• Third round: £2,000

• Fourth round: £3,000

• Quarter-finals: £4,000

• Semi-finals: £6,500

• Runner-up: £10,000

• Final: £15,000

You would be brave to bet against Luke Littler winning the Grand Slam of Darts because the Warrington phenom has a perfect career record at the tournament in Wolverhampton, backing up his 2024 triumph with victory last year.

And then to Alexandra Palace where the teenager will bid to become a triple world champion.

He is aiming to become the first player to win three world titles in a row since Phil Taylor did it in 2006, although ‘The Power’ did win eight in a row from 1995 to 2002.

Sky Sports remains the home of darts with the Grand Slam of Darts (November 14-22) and World Darts Championship (December 11-January 3) all live. Stream darts and more through NOW with no contract.

The top stories and transfer rumours from Wednesday’s newspapers…

PREMIER LEAGUE

Mikel Arteta has become the Premier League’s highest-paid boss on a £20m-a-year new contract – Daily Mail

Liverpool are weighing up another blockbuster signing to add to their mega money attacking line-up – Daily Star

The agent of Gianluigi Donnarumma, Enzo Raiola, has revealed Manchester City have provided his client with reassurances after the club’s recent guilty verdict – Daily Mirror

Kieran McKenna has landed a new job working as a technical observer for UEFA just months after leaving Ipswich – The Sun

Ex-Premier League star Cheikhou Kouyate has revealed that he spent years battling a heart condition. Kouyate, who recently announced his retirement, kept the problem a secret throughout his playing career – Daily Mirror

ENGLAND

Thomas Tuchel says the “train is rolling” without Cole Palmer after England impressed in his absence during the Nations League camp – Evening Standard

SCOTTISH FOOTBALL

Lawrence Shankland has delivered a major update on his hamstring injury and recovery – Scottish Sun

Hibs have confirmed that an Easter Road fan favourite and a former Celtic star will be part of new first team boss Marink Reedijk’s backroom team – Scottish Sun

ELSEWHERE

Lionel Messi was bizarrely gifted a yellow and red card by the referee who took charge of his final game for Argentina – Daily Mail

Matildas star Mary Fowler has reportedly returned to Australia to be with her injured boyfriend, Nathan Cleary, after her sudden withdrawal from international duty left senior football officials unimpressed – Daily Mail

F1

Rwanda looks set to pip South Africa to the post as Formula 1 nears a permanent return to Africa – The Independent

Formula 1 stages its sixth and final Sprint event of the year this weekend to conclude the first flyaway triple header of the sport’s busy 2026 season run in.

And, for the first time, the Sprint format is being used at the Singapore Grand Prix and its Marina Bay street track, home of the sport’s original night race.

But on a track not known for its overtaking, what kind of weekend can we expect with two qualifying sessions and two races?

How the Singapore GP weekend will be different to normal

When the Sprint format was first introduced at three races for the 2021 season, the tracks selected – Silverstone, Monza and Interlagos – were ones deemed to be particularly good for racing so to justify the addition of a 100km race on the Saturday as an appetiser to the main Sunday Grand Prix.

That has generally continued to be the case in the selection of Sprint venues up to this year, with perhaps the inclusion of Imola in 2022 the surprise exception.

Street tracks, which by their nature traditionally aren’t as overtaking-friendly as conventional permanent tracks, have generally not featured on that yearly list.

Azerbaijan did host a Sprint in 2023, but Baku’s wall-lined street track features the longest straight on the calendar and so allows passing.

Singapore certainly falls more into the category of conventional street track – there are no long straights of note and overtaking opportunities are severely limited around the confined, twisty layout.

The floodlit race is instead most known for its physicality owing to the hot and humid conditions of the Asian country and the fact the 62-lap race pushes towards the two-hour limit around a 19-corner lap that features plenty of 90-degree turns.

So, holding a second race this weekend appears counterintuitive in one sense to the original purpose of the Sprint format. However, there are flip sides to the decision.

The first relates to qualifying. Given the lack of passing opportunities in the race, qualifying is always considered absolutely essential at Marina Bay and, like all street tracks where the walls are so close, the Saturday spectacle is often spectacular.

The circuit was the scene of one of the most famous qualifying laps in the sport’s recent history when Lewis Hamilton surged to pole position for Mercedes in 2018, while numerous drivers have come a cropper against the barriers over the years when pushing for a decisive, grid-defining lap.

This year there will be two such sessions – Sprint Qualifying on Friday followed by Grand Prix Qualifying on Saturday – which means double the qualifying challenge and, therefore, double the jeopardy for drivers.

The Sprint format also means drivers and teams will have two-thirds less time to hone their cars’ set-ups and settings for the competitive sessions given there is only a single one-hour session of practice running instead of the usual three.

Building up rhythm and confidence is crucial on a street track so drivers know they will have to shortcut that process this time in Singapore. However, that is clearly easier said than done, increasing the likelihood of mistakes in sessions that count and teams going down set-up cul-de-sacs.

A further potential twist comes in the scheduling of the sessions.

That sole practice takes place in the hours before sunset at 4.30pm local time (9.30am BST) whereas Sprint Qualifying is at 8.30pm (1.30pm BST) when the floodlights will be in full effect and temperatures will be a little cooler, creating a set-up conundrum for teams as cars, engines and tyres won’t necessarily behave the same in different conditions.

Parc-ferme conditions mean teams can’t then touch the cars again for Saturday’s Sprint, which takes place during the late afternoon like practice.

A precursor to Monaco 2027

Next season the Sprint format is being expanded to 10 events and, when the full 2027 calendar was published last month, the surprise news came from the fact that Monaco had been selected to host one of them.

The Principality’s street circuit is even narrower and harder to pass on than Singapore’s, which has increasingly made qualifying the standout aspect of that particular race weekend as cars have become wider and more reliable.

Staging two races there next year therefore appears to be as counter-intuitive as it does in Singapore, yet the opposite thinking in terms of doubling up on qualifying and building in the potential for more unpredictability now appears to be a balancing factor.

It will be interesting to hear what drivers, who have mostly been supportive about bringing the Sprint to Monaco next year, make of the Singapore Sprint experience as it unfolds.

A four-team fight for Singapore victory?

Irrespective of how much unpredictability there is this weekend on Singapore’s Sprint debut, the weekend promises to be competitive in the battle for victory at the front.

Max Verstappen’s impressive win for Red Bull last week in Malaysia means F1’s ‘Big Four’ teams have now all won at least one race in the first year of the sport’s new regulations, with Mercedes’ early-season dominance a thing of the past despite the Silver Arrows’ continued command of both world championship races.

Marina Bay was actually one of only two races that Mercedes won last year although George Russell, who dominated that weekend, already knows his hopes of going back-to-back are effectively over thanks to a grid penalty for excessive engine usage that will send him to the back of Sunday’s grid.

Russell will still hope to be a factor at the front in Saturday’s Sprint, though, where the grid penalty does not apply.

But it is clearly championship leader Kimi Antonelli, who dominated Monaco but crashed in Baku qualifying, who will be carrying Mercedes’ front-running hopes into Sunday on a weekend the team bid to get a handle on why their big aerodynamic upgrade brought to Malaysia did not deliver the expected step forward.

The in-form Verstappen will also likely be a factor at the front for resurgent Red Bull as he finally looks to win the Singapore Grand Prix – at the 10th attempt.

Marina Bay is the one long-standing track on the current calendar (Madrid, where Verstappen finished second last month, only joined the schedule this year) that the Dutchman has yet to win at.

Verstappen has qualified and finished second in each of the last two years, so has certainly been knocking on the door to do so. Red Bull will hope their recent performance gains elsewhere transfer to the unique demands of Singapore.

Then there is McLaren, who claimed dominant victories with Lando Norris on F1’s last visits to high-downforce tracks in Hungary and Zandvoort but have hitherto not enjoyed great success across the first two legs of the Azerbaijan-Malaysia-Singapore triple header.

The absence of long straights is good news for Ferrari, who will hope the race pace that allowed Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to recover strongly from the team’s disastrous slick-tyre strategy at the start of last Sunday’s delayed Sepang race will transfer to the slower-speed streets of Singapore.

Formula 1 heads straight to Singapore for the last Sprint weekend of the season with track action starting this Friday, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime