The 2025 European Championship concluded last night as Gian van Veen won his first PDC major ranking title with a 9-8 win over Luke Humphries in the final.
Luke Humphries was in his second consecutive major ranking final after finishing runner-up a few weeks ago in the 2025 World Grand Prix.
No words!!🤩
— Gian van Veen (@GVV180) October 26, 2025
European Champion!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/D6wNOGF4Hg
While the world number one continues to try and keep a hold of that spot at the top, all plaudits go to the young Dutchman.
Gian van Veen has long been tipped for a PDC major title and securing this title alongside the £120,000 in prize money really pushes him towards that elite category in terms of rankings.
With a £600,000 total prize fund and some shock results, we take a look at the biggest winners and losers from the 2025 European Championship and see how it impacts the overall rankings in the PDC Order of Merit.
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👉 PDC Order of Merit changes following 2025 World Grand Prix
Order of Merit Changes: Losers
Rob Cross: Down 1 Place
Rob Cross started 2025 in 4th position in the Order of Merit table which earned him the automatic qualification to the Premier League line-up.
As the year has gone on though, he’s slowly slipped down the rankings and now finds himself in 8th.
A first round loss to Nathan Aspinall (6-1) was punishing but the real issue with this exit is that Cross is defending prize money from a runner-up finish in the 2023 Grand Slam of Darts in his next tournament.
He’s only £11k clear of Danny Noppert in 10th and another early exit at the 2025 Grand Slam of Darts could see Cross fall out of the top 10 completely.
This would make it much harder for Voltage to get invites to the World Series of Darts and Premier League in 2026…
Chris Dobey: Down 3 Places
Many were anticipating this to be a breakout season for Chris Dobey who reached the semi-finals of the 2025 World Championship and earned a place in the 2025 Premier League.
While Dobey has picked up two ProTour titles and had some good runs on the European Tour, he’s had mostly early exits from the major tournaments.
He’s not made the last 8 and a second round exit at the 2025 European Championship sees Hollywood drop 3 places in the rankings down to 11th.
Similar to Cross, if he doesn’t have a good run at the back end of the year it will also be hard to see him included in the invitational events due to his ranking position and form.
He isn’t defending much prize money though so a few good results could also see him jump back up towards the top 8.
Peter Wright: Down 12 Places
Peter Wright found himself in the worst case scenario.
The 2023 European Championship winner was defending his £120,000 prize money and it’s no secret that he’s been out of form since this win a few years ago…
A large number of early exits in major tournaments over the last few years had Wright going into this tournament NEEDING to perform but the Scotsman suffered a first round exit to Ross Smith.
Like we say, worst case scenario!
As a result, Wright has dropped 12 places in the OoM rankings and finds himself in 30th place, only £13k away from dropping out of the top 32 completely.
Wright isn’t defending much prize money going forward so it would be surprising to see him drop further but being £130k away from the top 16 now, it’s very hard to imagine Wright getting back to the top of darts without finding a major title.
You can’t write him off but this drop cements a decline that we’ve been seeing from Wright and it’s no longer something you can put down to a bad run of form.
Order of Merit Changes: Winners
Luke Humphries: Unchanged
As mentioned earlier, Luke Humphries found himself in a consecutive major final but also found himself as a consecutive runner-up.
Humphries is defending winning prize money at the Grand Slam of Darts, Players Championship and World Championship, £770,000 in total.
He also has Luke Littler closing in at just £70k behind in the rankings and two major tournaments where he isn’t defending any money so can just add to his tally…
It seems inevitable that Littler will become the world number one in the next few months (unless Humphries wins the Worlds) but this latest run was still a win for Humphries.
It’s building the momentum going into these ‘must perform’ tournaments and the £60k in prize money earned will keep building a buffer between every other darts player in the top 4 (besides Luke Littler).
Cameron Menzies: Up 5 Places
Despite a second round exit, Cameron Menzies has been one of the biggest winners from the 2025 European Championship.
The reason being that Menzies didn’t qualify for the tournament in 2023 so the £15,000 he earned in prize money helped him jump some of the players around him who were defending prize money.
Menzies is now up 5 places to 25th in the rankings. While he’s still £100k away from the top 16 he’s now £40k clear of the 32nd spot meaning he’s got a comfortable position to build on going forward.
This is most notable because until earlier this year, Menzies was still trying to juggle his darts career alongside a day job as a plumber.
Related – Cameron Menzies ‘finally’ quitting job to pursue darts dream
Having only just gone full-time as a pro, he still has tournaments coming up where he can only add to his earnings should he qualify for them all (which seems likely) meaning he can keep pushing up the rankings.
It wouldn’t be surprising as this is the second update we’ve done recently where he is one of the biggest winners!
Gian van Veen: Up 8 Places
The biggest winner to come from the 2025 European Championship is the actual winner, Gian van Veen.
Gian van Veen started 2025 with DOMINATING stats in the Players Championship events.
He won his first title at PC6 after finishing runner-up in PC5, was runner-up at the German Darts Grand Prix on the Euro Tour alongside three semi-final runs at recent Euro Tour events and had back-to-back quarter-final finishes at the UK Open and World Matchplay.
These results had many saying he was due a major title someday and fortunately for the Dutchman it came sooner than later.
He had a 109 average in his second round match against Ryan Searle, beat his idol and compatriot Michael van Gerwen in the semi-finals (with an injured finger) and beat the world number one in a deciding leg in the final.
The state of Gian van Veen's bleeding fingers after beating Michael van Gerwen to reach his first major final 🤯. Makes his achievement even more impressive pic.twitter.com/Mrl76Hv5ol
— Chris Hammer (@ChrisHammer180) October 26, 2025
It was a deserved victory which saw him jump 8 places in the rankings to 7th overall.
He still has opportunities over the next several months to add to his tally without defending much prize money so he could rise higher without needing another big title.
It’s likely that this win will just elevate his confidence and game though and we expect him to become one of the elite players in the game in the very near future!
Order of Merit Changes: Noteworthy
There were several players who had negligible changes to their ranking in terms of position (up or down a single position).
Gerwyn Price dropped 2 places to 13th following his surprise first round exit to Daryl Gurney.
The Welshman isn’t defending any sizable prize money for the next few major tournaments though so he has a good opportunity to quickly move back up the table towards the top 10.
Michael Smith failed to qualify for his third consecutive major tournament which had him drop a place to 29th.
With injuries and form a major issue, we could see him drop out of the top 32 very soon which is something you just couldn’t have predicted for the 2023 World Champion.
See also – Michael Smith provides updates on ‘multiple’ injury concerns
Ricardo Pietreczko moves back into the top 32 (31st) after a quarter-final run sees him jump 2 places. Between the top 16 – 32, players mostly moved up a place due to the Peter Wright drop.
A list of the updated top 32 can be found below:
| Rank | Player | Prize Money |
| 1 | Luke Humphries | £1,768,000 |
| 2 | Luke Littler | £1,695,500 |
| 3 | Michael van Gerwen | £741,250 |
| 4 | Stephen Bunting | £654,500 |
| 5 | James Wade | £581,750 |
| 6 | Jonny Clayton | £567,750 |
| 7 | Gian van Veen | £524,000 |
| 8 | Rob Cross | £508,500 |
| 9 | Josh Rock | £499,000 |
| 10 | Danny Noppert | £497,750 |
| 11 | Chris Dobey | £495,250 |
| 12 | Damon Heta | £478,500 |
| 13 | Gerwyn Price | £468,250 |
| 14 | Gary Anderson | £464,500 |
| 15 | Ross Smith | £459,250 |
| 16 | Martin Schindler | £428,250 |
| 17 | Dave Chisnall | £421,000 |
| 18 | Mike De Decker | £411,750 |
| 19 | Ryan Searle | £409,500 |
| 20 | Nathan Aspinall | £383,250 |
| 21 | Jermaine Wattimena | £381,500 |
| 22 | Ryan Joyce | £354,000 |
| 23 | Dimitri Van den Bergh | £341,750 |
| 24 | Daryl Gurney | £335,500 |
| 25 | Cameron Menzies | £323,500 |
| 26 | Dirk van Duijvenbode | £316,750 |
| 26 | Ritchie Edhouse | £316,750 |
| 28 | Luke Woodhouse | £316,500 |
| 29 | Michael Smith | £300,250 |
| 30 | Peter Wright | £297,500 |
| 31 | Ricardo Pietreczko | £286,250 |
| 32 | Joe Cullen | £285,500 |
If you missed the action, you can check out the highlights from the final day of action provided by the PDC below:
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