The 2026 PDC Development Tour is complete.
After 24 events, two new Tour Cards have been decided, the Development Tour World Championship places are settled, and the World Youth Championship has been whittled down to its final two players.
For me, the interesting part is comparing what actually happened with the 50,000-run simulations I published before the final weekend and again with two events remaining.
There were a few twists.
Bialecki finishes comfortably on top
Sebastian Bialecki finishes the 2026 Development Tour Order of Merit as the clear number one on £21,900.
His position had already become mathematically secure before the final two events, and nobody ultimately got remotely close to overturning it.
Behind him, however, things became incredibly tight.
The final leading positions were:
| Pos | Player | Prize Money |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sebastian Bialecki | £21,900 |
| 2 | Jurjen van der Velde | £12,350 |
| 3 | Cam Crabtree | £12,350 |
| 4 | Jamai van den Herik | £12,250 |
| 5 | Owen Bates | £12,200 |
| 6 | Jack Drayton | £12,200 |
| 7 | Leon Weber | £11,350 |
| 8 | Dominik Gruellich | £11,300 |
| 9 | Archie Self | £10,550 |
| 10 | James Beeton | £10,400 |
Just £1,950 separated second from tenth.
That shows just how congested the Development Tour became behind Bialecki.
Van den Herik completes the comeback
The biggest story of the Tour Card race is Jamai van den Herik.
Before the final four events, my simulation gave him just a 3.69% chance of collecting one of the two available Tour Cards.
After the first two tournaments of the final weekend, that had risen dramatically to 19.80%.
He then completed the job.
Van den Herik finishes fourth overall on £12,250, but because several players above and around him already held Tour Cards, he takes one of the two new cards available through the Development Tour.
It is a great example of why I kept stressing that the raw Order of Merit did not tell the whole story.
Fourth overall was enough.
Drayton holds on
Jack Drayton takes the other Tour Card.
That is far less surprising.
Before the final four events, the Q4QS simulation gave Drayton a 98.27% chance of securing a card.
With two tournaments left that remained at 95.91%.
He did not ultimately need a spectacular finish.
His £12,200 final total was enough to get the job done.
So our model identified Drayton as overwhelmingly likely to qualify from the start of the final weekend, and that is exactly what happened.
Weber misses out
Leon Weber is probably the player who will look back on the weekend with the most frustration.
With four events remaining, Weber had a 56.78% Tour Card probability in the simulation.
With two events left, that was still 51.96%.
He was effectively the favourite for the second available card.
But Weber finishes on £11,350, £900 behind Van den Herik.
That is not a huge difference across a 24-event season, but it proved decisive.
Gruellich and Beeton also fall short
Dominik Gruellich finishes eighth overall on £11,300, while James Beeton ends tenth on £10,400.
Both remained realistic contenders entering the final stages.
With two events remaining, Gruellich had a 10.63% Tour Card chance and Beeton 15.42%.
Neither found the final run required.
Archie Self also finishes strongly in ninth on £10,550, having come from much further back during the closing events.
Coates wins Development Tour 23
Henry Coates produced one of the performances of the final weekend by winning Development Tour 23.
He beat Owen Bates 5-1 in the final, averaging 97.41 compared with Bates' 89.55.
Coates went through the tournament unbeaten with nine wins and an overall event average of 86.89.
Bates had an excellent event himself, averaging 90.79 across his run to the final.
Jamai van den Herik and Tyler Thorpe reached the semi-finals.
That run was important for Van den Herik's eventual Tour Card position, even though Bates stopped him 5-2 in the last four.
Baysal takes Development Tour 24
The final Development Tour event of 2026 went to Kaya Baysal.
Baysal beat Jurjen van der Velde 5-3 in the final, finishing the tournament with nine straight wins and an 89.33 event average.
Van der Velde's run to the final was also significant.
The £2,000 runner-up money helped lift him to £12,350, level with Cam Crabtree and ultimately second on the final Order of Merit.
Owen Bates and Duyane Wade Decena were the beaten semi-finalists.
The World Championship places
The final Development Tour World Championship race produces another example of why eligibility mattered throughout this series.
The three highlighted Development Tour places go to:
Jurjen van der Velde
Cam Crabtree
Jamai van den Herik
Van der Velde and Crabtree both finish on £12,350, with Van den Herik just £100 behind them on £12,250.
Again, that should be read alongside the qualification rules rather than simply taking the top three names on the overall Order of Merit.
Players who had already qualified through another route did not need another Development Tour place, allowing qualification to pass down the table where appropriate.
That was the caveat I included throughout the simulation articles, and it ended up being an important one.
And then came the World Youth Championship
The action continued with the PDC World Youth Championship.
The final stage produced a 64-player knockout field, but it did not finish with a champion.
Instead, it decided the two players who will contest the eventual World Youth Championship final.
Those players are:
Cam Crabtree and Jan Schmidt.
Crabtree beat Luke Littler 6-5 in a superb semi-final.
There was virtually nothing between them statistically.
Crabtree averaged 97.91.
Littler averaged 97.89.
One leg separated them.
In the other semi-final, Jan Schmidt beat Charlie Manby 6-3, producing a 94.85 average against Manby's 91.63.
So the World Youth Championship final will be:
Cam Crabtree v Jan Schmidt
Crabtree reached the final with five wins and an overall average of 90.40.
Schmidt also won five matches and actually posted the higher tournament average of the two at 92.81.
They now advance to the showpiece final.
Littler stopped in the semi-finals
Luke Littler unsurprisingly produced the highest overall average among the leading players in the knockout stages.
His tournament average was 95.60, but that was not enough to get past Crabtree.
That 6-5 semi-final is another reminder that averages do not automatically decide knockout darts.
One leg was enough to end Littler's run.
Manby also impresses
Charlie Manby reached the other semi-final with an overall average of 90.24.
He had beaten Ansh Sood 6-1 in the opening round before progressing all the way to the last four, where Schmidt finally stopped him.
Kaya Baysal, Henry Coates, Harrison Leigh and Arthur Allston made up the quarter-finalists.
Coates again performed strongly, averaging 93.20 across his World Youth matches, only a day after winning Development Tour 23.
A fascinating end to the Development Tour season
The final weekend ultimately showed exactly why these races are difficult to call.
Jack Drayton was the obvious favourite for a Tour Card and delivered.
Leon Weber was favourite for the second available card but missed out.
Jamai van den Herik moved from an outsider at the beginning of the weekend to a Tour Card holder by the end of it.
And players who already held cards continued to have a huge influence on everybody else's prospects.
The final outcome is:
Development Tour winner: Sebastian Bialecki
New Tour Cards: Jamai van den Herik and Jack Drayton
Development Tour World Championship places: Jurjen van der Velde, Cam Crabtree and Jamai van den Herik
World Youth Championship finalists: Cam Crabtree and Jan Schmidt
For Q4QS, the 50,000-run simulations were never intended to predict an exact finishing order.
They were designed to show where the probabilities sat and how quickly those probabilities could change.
Van den Herik might be the perfect example.
He started the final weekend as a 3.69% Tour Card chance.
He finishes it with a Tour Card.
That is why they still have to throw the darts.
