The 2026 Grand Slam of Darts starts this Saturday, running to 22 November at WV Active in Wolverhampton. Unlike the last ten years, the Grand Slam of Darts now involves 48 players in 16 groups of three, with one seed per group.

This new round-robin format replaces the old eight-group-of-four format, aiming to bring more drama and a larger field to reflect the depth of quality darts now has to offer. With £200,000 going to the winner of the Eric Bristow Trophy, what’s more important for many of the players benefiting from the 48-player expansion is the second place and third-place prize money: £12,500 and £5,000 each, and a last 16 of £20,000.

What was an essential part of the competition before, the group stages are now almost filtering players, becoming a short knockout with one defeat ending a player’s tournament before he’s even started. Finishing second was a safety net, allowing players to progress although losing in the group stage. In the 2026 Grand Slam of Darts, there is no safety net: how could that impact the past field?

Second place was nearly as good as first

Finishing first place in a group can give a player confidence, dominating their assigned field and, often, rarely losing a match out of three. Second place doesn’t give the same confidence, but it gives the same tangible outcome: qualification into the last 16. In each of the last ten years, at least two runners-up won their last-16 tie and progressed into the quarter-finals, showing that the old group stage gave players who missed out on first place a genuine second chance. Compared to this year, players like Tommy Morris are favoured in short-format formats and in only two games, the possibility of losing suddenly shortens.

With runner-ups winning 37.5% of their last 16 ties against group winners, it proves that winning second happens too much to call this an upset. This old format treated second place as a near-equal route, and this year this route closes. 2018 had the most second-place winners against first-place finishers in the last 16, with five second-place finishers beating group toppers. This five-of-the-eight split showed the lack of advantage players had. Firstly, Michael Van Gerwen beat Michael Smith 10-8, but the biggest shock was German Michael Unterbuchner beating James Wade 10-6, perhaps suggesting that the confidence and momentum of underdogs sneaking a second place carried more weight on the outcome than an elite player expecting to win their group, and doing so. 2023 showed this as well, with Damon Heta beating the three-time champion Van Gerwen 10-7.

However, the further the tournament went, the less second place held up. Of the 34 matches from the quarter-finals onwards that pitted a group winner against a runner-up, the runner-up won just 10, a 29.4% return that falls well below the 37.5% from the last 16, and three of those 10 belong to José de Sousa’s 2020 run alone.

Stretching from best of 19 to best of 31, the longer format gave the stronger group winners more legs to recover, and the gap has only widened in recent years, with runners-up winning two of 14 such matches since 2021: Stephen Bunting over Stowe Buntz in 2023 and Danny Noppert over Lukas Wenig in 2025. Only four of the 20 finalists finished second in their group, and the attrition shows at every stage, with runners-up taking three in eight quarter-final places, one in four semi-final places and one title in ten. If second place has been fading as a route for five years, how much will this year’s format actually take away?

Jose de Sousa won the 2020 Grand Slam of Darts

The title that disappears 

In 2020, José De Sousa won the Grand Slam of Darts after winning his tour card in 2019, becoming the first Portuguese player to win a PDC major. Finishing second in Group C, De Sousa won 12 legs and lost 10, losing one game. Beating Lisa Ashton 5-1, averaging 100.03, De Sousa faced considerable trouble against Ratajski, beating the Polish number 1 5-4, averaging shy of 100 at 99.69.

However, he lost handsomely to the eventual Group C winner, Michael Smith, 5-2, averaging 99.10 against Bully Boy, who went on to win the group with a leg difference of +10. Two takeaways can be taken here: Michael Smith would have won this group under this year's format, meaning the 2020 champion would have gone home with £12,500. Smith was dominant in this group and outclassed the eventual champion. But it is also clear that De Sousa, although finishing second, was playing champion-level darts, averaging 99 in all three group stage games. Perhaps this format included the best two players to reward players like De Sousa who happened to run into a top-form Smith.

De Sousa’s 2020 Run From Second Place

The run that followed never saw the Portuguese average above 100 again, beating Dave Chisnall in the Last 16 10-7, averaging 95.37. He didn’t need second-place form in these stages, beating Michael Smith 16-14 in the quarter-final, averaging 98.52, lower than his average when losing in the group stage.

This proved to be his second-highest average of the knockout stage, beating Simon Whitlock 16-12 in the semi-finals, averaging 97.53 and winning the title with the same scoreline, beating Wade with a 99.95 average. De Sousa beat the player who had topped his group in the quarter-finals, demonstrating clearly what a nine-leg match measures and what it doesn’t. A 5-2 defeat over a short format became a 16-14 win, and under the 2026 rules, that 16-14 win wouldn’t have happened. Yet if one title goes due to the format, how many finals go with it?

One Leg from a Final

Two of the four finals reached from second place came down to a single leg. Finishing second in Group G in 2016 with a 2-1 record and legs of 13-11, James Wade was edged out of top spot by Jamie Hughes, who matched his record but finished on 13-10, a difference of one leg. The Machine made the most of the reprieve, thrashing Benito van de Pas 10-2, dismantling Chris Dobey 16-5 and edging Gary Anderson 16-14 in the semi-finals before Michael van Gerwen beat him 16-8 in the final.

Twelve months later, Peter Wright went through exactly the same thing, finishing second in Group E on 2-1 with legs of 12-9, behind Glen Durrant’s 14-10. Averaging 103.69 to beat Stephen Bunting 10-4 in the last 16, Snakebite then beat Durrant himself 16-10 in the quarter-finals and Anderson 16-15 in the semi-finals, before losing the final 16-12 to Van Gerwen.

Peter Wright reached the final despite finishing second.

In both cases, the player who pipped them to first place was out within two rounds, with Hughes losing 10-9 to Dobey in the last 16 and Durrant losing to Wright in the quarter-finals. Under this year’s rules, a single leg in the group stage would have decided who reached the final, and on both occasions it would have sent home the player who went further.

If any player owes his Grand Slam record to the old format, it is Rob Cross. Losing 5-4 to Van Gerwen in Group G in 2023 despite averaging 97.19 to the Dutchman’s 94.58, Voltage finished second on 2-1, and what followed was the best run of his Grand Slam career. Averaging 103.97 to beat Nathan Aspinall 10-8 in the last 16, he then beat Damon Heta 16-6 and Bunting 16-13 to reach the final, where he averaged 103.61 and still lost 16-8 to Luke Humphries. That was not a one-off either.

Cross won a last-16 tie from second place in 2017, 2021, 2023 and 2024, reaching the quarter-finals every time, which means every Grand Slam quarter-final he has reached since 2016 began with a group he failed to win. Under this year’s rules, every one of those runs ends in the groups, and a player who outscored the eventual group winner in their head-to-head would have left Wolverhampton with £12,500. If the runners-up are the casualties, were the champions who topped their groups ever as safe as the honours list suggests?

The Champions Who Survive

For the champions, the picture looks very different. Seven of the last ten won all three of their group matches, with Van Gerwen going 3-0 in 2016 and 2017 on legs of 15-4 and 15-7, Gerwyn Price doing the same in 2019 on 15-9, Michael Smith in 2022 on 15-5, Humphries in 2023 on 15-4 and Luke Littler in both 2024 and 2025, on 15-4 and 15-5.

Averaging 112.16 in a 5-0 win over Keane Barry in 2024, The Nuke treated the group stage as a warm-up, and every finalist in both of his title-winning years topped their group. For the dominant player of each era, from Van Gerwen to Littler, the format change makes no difference to the outcome. The concern sits with the champions who didn’t dominate.

Grand Slam Finalists by Group Finish

Only one player won the title from first place without going unbeaten, and he did it twice. Losing 5-4 to Simon Whitlock in 2018 despite averaging 104.58, Price still topped Group F on 2-1 because his legs of 14-11 edged Whitlock’s 11-11. Three years later, The Iceman lost 5-4 to Martin Schindler, who averaged 101.66, and again finished first on leg difference, his 14-9 ahead of Nathan Rafferty’s 14-11.

Even in 2016, before any of his titles, Price topped Group B on leg difference after a three-way tie at 2-1 with Robert Thornton and Dimitri Van den Bergh. Two of his three Grand Slam titles therefore survive this year’s rule only on legs, the same margin that cost Wade and Wright first place.

The comparison is not exact, with the old groups giving each player three matches and the new ones only two, but the arithmetic only gets harsher. In a group of three, one defeat leaves a seed relying on the other result going his way, with far fewer legs to make up the difference.

Verdict

So would the last decade’s champions have survived this year’s groups? Nine of ten would have, and 16 of the 20 finalists would still have reached the final, which means the honours list barely changes. José de Sousa’s 2020 title is the one that disappears, and with it the finals reached by Wade in 2016, Wright in 2017 and Cross in 2023.

What does change is everything underneath. Runners-up won 30 last-16 ties, took 10 semi-final places and reached four finals across the decade, and every one of those runs ends in the groups under the 2026 format. That route mattered most to players outside the elite, players like Mickey Mansell, who reached the 2024 semi-finals from second place, and it is the route this year’s format has closed.

The trend was already heading this way, with every finalist in 2024 and 2025 winning their group and runners-up winning only two of 14 matches against group winners from the quarter-finals onwards since 2021, so the new format formalises what the last five years had started.

The biggest change is to the opening weekend. Under the old format, a seed could drop a group match and still recover, and Price won two titles doing exactly that. From Saturday, a single defeat could end a seed’s tournament before the stage he usually treats as the real start, and with leg-difference deciding groups of three, the margin that separated Wade and Wright from first place will now separate seeds from the exit. Which seeds are best equipped to cope with that is the next question.