European Championship qualification: 32-player field and draw set

European Championship qualification was settled on Sunday 18 October, when the Dutch Darts Championship in Maastricht finished and the 32-player field and first-round bracket for Dortmund were published. Stephen Bunting qualified as the 28th seed, while Michael Smith and Sebastian Bialecki did not. The tournament runs from Thursday 22 to Sunday 25 October with a £750,000 prize fund.

Bunting beat Cameron Menzies on Saturday 17 October. He went on to reach the semi-finals in Maastricht, where Niels Zonneveld beat him 7-4. Zonneveld then won the final 8-5 against Danny Noppert.

The 32 players and the first-round bracket

Sporting News published the 32 qualifiers and a bracket for the European Championship. Among those listed are Luke Littler, Luke Humphries, Gerwyn Price, Michael van Gerwen, Rob Cross, Josh Rock and Jonny Clayton. Ross Smith is the top seed and Wessel Nijman the second seed. Players are seeded by their prize money across the 15 European Tour events of 2024, so first-round pairings follow seeding order and there was no draw. The table below shows the first-round ties in bracket order. “TBC” marks a higher seed whose name is not given in the published bracket.

Tie	Player	Opponent
1	(1) Ross Smith	(32) Karel Sedlacek
2	(16) James Wade	(17) Damon Heta
3	(8) TBC	(25) Andrew Gilding
4	(9) TBC	Dirk van Duijvenbode
5	(4) TBC	(29) Cameron Menzies
6	(13) TBC	(20) Rob Cross
7	(5) TBC	(28) Stephen Bunting
8	(12) TBC	Ryan Searle
9	(2) Wessel Nijman	Martin Schindler
10	(15) TBC	(18) Jermaine Wattimena
11	(7) TBC	(26) Niko Springer
12	(10) TBC	(23) Chris Dobey
13	(3) TBC	(30) Dave Chisnall
14	(14) TBC	(19) Michael van Gerwen
15	(6) TBC	(27) Cristo Reyes
16	(11) TBC	(22) William O’Connor

How Maastricht settled the final places

Going into the weekend, Bunting occupied the final provisional qualification spot, while Smith sat outside the qualification places, according to DartsWorld.

Bunting beat Menzies 6-2, then Nathan Aspinall 6-1 in the third round and Heta 6-3 in the quarter-finals. Smith lost 6-1 to Aspinall in the second round, and Bialecki lost 6-0 to Gian van Veen, ending both players’ hopes. Neither Smith nor Bialecki appears among the 32 qualifiers, and neither does Kim Huybrechts, who lost 6-5 to Jimmy van Schie in the first round. Our report on Daryl Gurney’s opening-round exit covers Bialecki’s first-round win.

Sedlacek, who was about £2,000 short of the cut-off before Maastricht, qualified as the 32nd seed. He lost 6-4 to Martin Schindler in the second round, and Schindler also qualified. Menzies lost to Bunting but qualified as the 29th seed.

Dortmund format, dates and prize money

The European Championship starts on Thursday 22 October and ends on Sunday 25 October. All first-round matches are played in the evening session on either Thursday or Friday. The winners go into the second round, the last 16, which is played across the afternoon and evening sessions on Saturday. The quarter-finals, semi-finals and final are all on Sunday.

First-round matches are best of 11 legs. The second round and quarter-finals are best of 19 legs, and the semi-finals and final are best of 21 legs. The prize fund totals £750,000, shared as follows.

Stage	Players	Prize money
Winner	1	£150,000
Runner-up	1	£80,000
Semi-finalists	2	£50,000
Quarter-finalists	4	£35,000
Second round	8	£20,000
First round	16	£7,500

What happened in Maastricht on the final day

Sunday’s quarter-finals in Maastricht were Danny Noppert 6-2 Luke Woodhouse, Gian van Veen 6-3 Ryan Searle, Niels Zonneveld 6-5 Wessel Nijman and Stephen Bunting 6-3 Damon Heta. Noppert beat Van Veen 7-5 in the first semi-final, and Zonneveld beat Bunting 7-4 in the second. Zonneveld won the final 8-5.

Home favourite Van Gerwen was beaten 6-5 by William O’Connor in the second round, and Price lost 6-4 to Zonneveld in the third round. Both qualified for the Dortmund field, with Van Gerwen listed as the 19th seed and O’Connor as the 22nd.

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