PDC World Championship Winners: Every Champion From 1994 To Luke Littler

The PDC World Championship winners list is the closest thing darts has to a roll of honour. Since the Professional Darts Corporation staged its first world final at the Circus Tavern in 1994, only 13 men have got their hands on the trophy – and one of them has won it 14 times. Here is every champion, in order, and what the list tells you about how the sport has changed.

Every PDC World Championship winner, 1994 to 2026

Year	Champion
1994	Dennis Priestley
1995	Phil Taylor
1996	Phil Taylor
1997	Phil Taylor
1998	Phil Taylor
1999	Phil Taylor
2000	Phil Taylor
2001	Phil Taylor
2002	Phil Taylor
2003	John Part
2004	Phil Taylor
2005	Phil Taylor
2006	Phil Taylor
2007	Raymond van Barneveld
2008	John Part
2009	Phil Taylor
2010	Phil Taylor
2011	Adrian Lewis
2012	Adrian Lewis
2013	Phil Taylor
2014	Michael van Gerwen
2015	Gary Anderson
2016	Gary Anderson
2017	Michael van Gerwen
2018	Rob Cross
2019	Michael van Gerwen
2020	Peter Wright
2021	Gerwyn Price
2022	Peter Wright
2023	Michael Smith
2024	Luke Humphries
2025	Luke Littler
2026	Luke Littler

That is 33 championships and 13 different names. Six of those men have won it once and never again.

The Phil Taylor problem

You cannot read the list without noticing that Phil Taylor owns a third of it. Fourteen PDC titles between 1995 and 2013, including eight in a row, on top of the two world crowns he won before the split. For a decade the World Championship was not really a tournament so much as a formality with a fortnight of undercard attached.

Taylor’s run also explains why the one-off winners matter so much. Dennis Priestley beat Taylor to become the PDC’s inaugural champion in 1994. John Part ended the eight-year streak in 2003 and won it again in 2008. Raymond van Barneveld’s 2007 final against Taylor, settled in a sudden-death leg, is still the match most fans reach for when they are asked to name the best of the lot.

The modern era: seven champions in nine years

From 2018 onwards the trophy has moved around. Rob Cross won it as a debutant, beating Taylor in the great man’s final professional match. Peter Wright won two, Gerwyn Price ended a long Welsh wait in 2021, and Michael Smith finally converted at the ninth attempt in 2023 after a final that produced arguably the most famous leg in the sport’s history.

Luke Humphries took the 2024 title as the culmination of a run that carried him to world number one. Twelve months later the story changed completely.

Luke Littler and the two-title teenager

Luke Littler won his first world title at Alexandra Palace in January 2025 at the age of 17, having reached the final as a debutant the year before. He is comfortably the youngest world champion in the sport’s history, and it is hard to imagine that record being seriously threatened.

He then defended it, beating Gian van Veen 7-1 in the 2026 final on 3 January to make it back-to-back. Littler goes into the autumn of 2026 as reigning world champion, world number one on the PDC Order of Merit with around £3.1m banked, and holder of the World Masters, UK Open, Premier League and World Matchplay titles won across the same calendar year. That is why the clean-sweep conversation refuses to go away.

Most PDC world titles

• 14 – Phil Taylor
• 3 – Michael van Gerwen
• 2 – John Part, Adrian Lewis, Gary Anderson, Peter Wright, Luke Littler
• 1 – Dennis Priestley, Raymond van Barneveld, Rob Cross, Gerwyn Price, Michael Smith, Luke Humphries

Littler is 19. If he keeps hold of the trophy for even half of the next decade the shape of that list changes permanently, though catching Taylor would still mean another 12 titles.

Who is next?

Three ranking majors sit between now and the next roll call. The World Grand Prix in Leicester runs from 28 September to 4 October, the European Championship follows on 22-25 October, and the Grand Slam of Darts lands in Wolverhampton on 14-22 November before the Players Championship Finals close the floor season.

The 2026/27 PDC World Championship then begins at Alexandra Palace on 10 December, with the final on 3 January 2027. Littler will arrive chasing a third straight title. Van Veen, beaten in the last final and now up around second on the Order of Merit, Humphries and Gerwyn Price are the obvious men trying to stop him – and, as the winners list shows, this tournament has a long history of producing a name nobody had pencilled in.

Full historical results and the current schedule are published by the PDC at pdc.tv. For more on how the perfect leg fits into all this, see our explainer on what a nine-dart finish is.

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