Luke Littler vs Gerwyn Price: The Blackpool Mauling And What Is Left Of The Rivalry

Luke Littler vs Gerwyn Price was never supposed to be the rivalry that defined this stage of darts. Littler’s headline duels have been with Luke Humphries and Michael van Gerwen; Price was the old guard, the noise, the bloke who had already done his winning. Then came Blackpool in July, and a World Matchplay final that turned into one of the most one-sided beatings the Winter Gardens has staged in years.

Littler won it 18–9. Here is how the two men got there, why the scoreline flattered nobody, and what is actually left of the rivalry heading into the autumn.

The Blackpool final that reframed Luke Littler vs Gerwyn Price

Price arrived at the 2026 World Matchplay final having done the hard part. Blackpool is the most attritional major in the sport — long legs, no sets, a crowd three feet from the oche and a format that punishes anyone who cannot sustain a scoring rate for an hour. Getting to the last two is a serious week’s work.

What followed was not a contest. Littler won 18–9, closing out the fifth major of a season in which he has won everything he has entered. For Price it was the cruellest kind of final: the one where you are good enough to be there and nowhere near good enough on the night.

That result is now the anchor point of the whole head-to-head. Every future meeting gets measured against it, which is exactly the problem Price has.

Two very different routes to the top

The contrast between them is the reason this fixture is worth watching at all.

Price came to darts late and sideways. A professional rugby player in Wales before he picked up a tour card, he brought the intensity of a contact sport with him — the fist pumps, the roars, the physical presence at the oche that made him the most divisive man in the sport for the best part of a decade. “The Iceman” won the PDC World Championship in 2021, beating Gary Anderson in the final, and spent a long spell as world number one. He did it by making every leg feel like a fight.

Littler did the opposite. He arrived at Alexandra Palace as a 16-year-old and reached a World Championship final before most players his age have a tour card. He has since won two world titles — the most recent a 7–1 demolition of Gian van Veen in January 2026 — and he wins by removing drama from the situation entirely. No theatre, no war of attrition, just a scoring rate most of the tour cannot live with.

One man built a career on turning the temperature up. The other wins by refusing to notice it.

Where the rankings leave them

The Order of Merit tells the story more bluntly than any head-to-head can. On the late-July snapshot, Littler sat top on roughly £3.13m — more than three times the earnings of the man in second, Van Veen, with Humphries a few thousand pounds further back in third.

Price was fourth, on around £722,000. In any other era that is a formidable position: top four in the world, seeded for everything, a former world champion still in the mix. In this era it is a quarter of what the leader has banked. If you want the mechanics of how that two-year rolling list actually works, our guide to the PDC Order of Merit breaks it down.

Why this is not a rivalry in the Humphries sense

It is worth being honest about what this fixture is. A rivalry needs two players trading blows, and that is what Littler and Humphries have — a Premier League final settled 11–10, a World Masters final settled 6–5, results that have gone both ways often enough to keep the thing alive. We have covered that one in full in our piece on the Littler–Humphries rivalry.

Littler vs Price is something different: a generational collision. Price represents the standard Littler has to beat to be taken seriously as an all-timer, and Blackpool was the night he cleared it without breaking stride. The intrigue now is not whether Price can win a series of matches against Littler. It is whether he can win one big one, and whether he still has a major in him.

The Littler problem, stated plainly

Littler has won all five majors played in 2026: the World Championship, the World Masters, the UK Open, the Premier League and the World Matchplay. Nobody has ever swept a full calendar year of them. Phil Taylor comparisons used to be lazy shorthand; they are now the only comparison available.

That leaves the rest of the tour, Price included, playing for the same thing — the first dent. Our rundown of what still stands between Littler and a clean sweep lays out the maths, and it is not comfortable reading for the chasing pack.

What happens next

Nothing has been decided yet. The autumn run of majors is entirely unplayed, starting with the World Grand Prix from 28 September to 4 October — the double-start event, and the one format on the calendar where raw scoring counts for least. Then the European Championship from 22 to 25 October, the Grand Slam of Darts from 14 to 22 November, the Players Championship Finals from 27 to 29 November, and the World Championship from 10 December.

Price’s case is straightforward: he is a former world champion with a game built for exactly the kind of grind the Grand Prix and the Grand Slam demand, and he has been written off before. Littler’s case is that he has not lost a major all year. Draws, entry lists and stage times are published by the PDC ahead of each event.

If the two of them meet again on a Sunday night this autumn, Blackpool will be the only thing anyone talks about beforehand. Price’s job is to make it the second-most interesting result in the rivalry.

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