Wessel Nijman ProTour Order of Merit: No. 1 in 2026
On this page
- Wessel Nijman ProTour Order of Merit: The Final Top 10
- Nijman’s Season of Dominance
- Ross Smith’s Chase Falls £58,000 Short
- Doets, Woodhouse and the Dutch Five
- Humphries’ Remarkable Return from 16 Events
- Two Tables, One Number One
- Littler and Greaves Just Outside the Top 32
- What It Means for Minehead and the Worlds
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Conclusion
The wessel nijman protour order of merit story has a clear ending. Wessel Nijman finished the 2026 PDC ProTour season as its number one, banking £284,500 in prize money to sit comfortably clear at the top of the final standings. It crowns a season in which the Dutchman won eight ranking titles, posted the tour’s highest win rate, around 82 percent, averaged close to 97.70, and climbed inside the world’s top 15. No other player matched his consistency from the first floor event to the last.
Nijman’s year was built on the PDC’s floor circuit, where he was simply the best player in the world. Six Players Championship titles and two European Tour crowns gave him eight ranking titles in 2026, more than anyone else managed. Ross Smith, his nearest challenger, finished £58,000 behind him despite an excellent season of his own. The gap tells the story of a campaign in which one man set the standard and nobody could live with it long enough to catch him.
Wessel Nijman ProTour Order of Merit: The Final Top 10
Here are the final standings at the top of the wessel nijman protour order of merit table, confirmed after the last ProTour event of the season. The ProTour Order of Merit counts prize money won across all 49 ProTour events of 2026, covering both the Players Championship floor events and the European Tour.
| Rank | Player | Prize Money |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wessel Nijman | £284,500 |
| 2 | Ross Smith | £226,500 |
| 3 | Kevin Doets | £181,750 |
| 4 | Luke Woodhouse | £172,000 |
| 5 | Chris Dobey | £170,750 |
| 6 | Danny Noppert | £153,500 |
| 7 | Luke Humphries | £152,000 |
| 8 | Jermaine Wattimena | £147,500 |
| 9 | Krzysztof Ratajski | £144,250 |
| 10 | Niels Zonneveld | £142,750 |
Jonny Clayton was 11th on £141,750, Andrew Gilding 12th on £129,750, and world number two Gian van Veen 13th on £123,250, with Michael van Gerwen 16th and Gerwyn Price 21st. Further down, the two biggest names in the sport sat just outside the top 32: world number one Luke Littler finished 33rd on £85,500, and Beau Greaves ended her debut season as a Tour Card holder in 34th on £79,500.
Nijman’s Season of Dominance
Nijman’s 2026 was a season of dominance built on the floor, and the numbers are remarkable. He won around 82 percent of his matches, the highest win rate of any PDC professional, while averaging close to 97.70, among the best averages on tour. He produced more than 20 matches averaging over 100 and won six Players Championship events.
The title haul puts his year in historic company. His six Players Championship titles in a single season made him only the third Dutch player to win the most floor titles in a year, following Raymond van Barneveld in 2007 and Michael van Gerwen in 2012, 2013 and 2016. Across the whole of darts history, only Phil Taylor has bettered that kind of single-season floor dominance.
What makes it more striking is where he has come from. Banned from August 2020 until February 2023 after a betting offence during a Modus Super Series match, his rise since returning has been one of the sport’s most unlikely stories, and 2026 was the year he reached the summit of the ProTour.
One honest caveat: all eight titles came before the end of June, the last at the Slovak Darts Open, where he beat Rob Cross in the final. He cooled off afterwards, reaching one more semi-final but no further finals, and lost 6-5 to Martin Schindler in the first round of the European Championship in October. He has also never gone beyond the last 16 at a televised major, despite winning 13 of his 19 PDC major appearances. The floor season proved he is the best week-in, week-out player in the world; the majors remain the one box left to tick.
Ross Smith’s Chase Falls £58,000 Short
Ross Smith was the only player who kept Nijman within sight, and his season deserves recognition in its own right. The Englishman earned £226,500 to finish second, winning two Players Championship events and two European Tour titles. Four ranking titles in a year would be a career-best campaign for almost any player on tour, and Smith’s consistency kept the pressure on Nijman deep into the season. In the end, though, the gap was decisive. Nijman’s £58,000 advantage is roughly the value of four Players Championship titles, and it reflects the difference between a very good season and a historic one.
Doets, Woodhouse and the Dutch Five
Behind the top two, the most striking feature of the final standings is the strength of the Dutch contingent. Five players from the Netherlands finished inside the top ten, a showing no other nation could match. Kevin Doets led the chasing Dutch pack in third on £181,750, a reward for a breakthrough year in which he claimed his first PDC ranking title and reached a European Tour final. Luke Woodhouse took fourth on £172,000 after winning both his first Players Championship title and his first European Tour title in the same season.
Danny Noppert finished sixth on £153,500, Jermaine Wattimena eighth on £147,500, and Niels Zonneveld completed the Dutch five in tenth on £142,750. Between them, the five Dutchmen banked more than £850,000 in ProTour prize money in 2026. Chris Dobey finished fifth on £170,750, a year that included a nine-darter at Players Championship 34, while Krzysztof Ratajski took ninth on £144,250.
Humphries’ Remarkable Return from 16 Events
Luke Humphries finished seventh on the ProTour Order of Merit with £152,000, and he did it while playing in only 16 of the 49 ProTour events. His limited schedule did not stop him from winning four titles, and he reached three more finals, losing each one. It is an extraordinary return from so few appearances. His year ended in style, with his fourth Players Championship title of 2026 at Players Championship 33 in Leicester, where he beat Niels Zonneveld 8-4 in the final despite having lost over a stone in weight to food poisoning. Had Humphries played a full ProTour schedule, the final standings might have looked very different.
Two Tables, One Number One
One distinction matters for anyone reading the end-of-season tables, because two different rankings carry similar names. The ProTour Order of Merit, the table Nijman tops with £284,500, counts prize money from all 49 ProTour events, covering both the Players Championship floor events and the European Tour. The Players Championship Order of Merit is a separate, narrower table that counts only the 34 Players Championship events, and it decides qualification and seeding for the Players Championship Finals in Minehead. Nijman tops both. On the Players Championship table he finished with £160,500, clear of Chris Dobey, Kevin Doets, Luke Woodhouse and Jermaine Wattimena, who completed the top five. The full PC-only standings are in our Players Championship Order of Merit 2026 post. Whichever way the 2026 floor season is measured, Wessel Nijman finished first.
Littler and Greaves Just Outside the Top 32
The two most talked-about names in the final standings are the ones sitting just outside the top 32, and both tell a story about how the modern tour works. Luke Littler, the world number one, finished 33rd on the ProTour Order of Merit with £85,500, largely because of his limited schedule. He played in only five ProTour events all season, but still won two European Tour titles. His ranking is a product of choice rather than form: the world champion picks his events, and the floor is not where he spends his time. But he finished outside the top 100 on the Players Championship Order of Merit, so he will not defend his Players Championship Finals title in Minehead.
Beau Greaves ended her debut season as a Tour Card holder in 34th place on £79,500, one spot behind Littler. It is an outstanding first year for the Englishwoman, who has established herself as a fixture on the ProTour. The season’s highest-ranked newcomer was Cristo Reyes, who returned to the PDC circuit after a six-year absence and earned £107,750 to finish 22nd.
What It Means for Minehead and the Worlds
The end of the ProTour season sets up the final act of 2026, and Nijman goes into it as the man to beat. As the number one seed, he opens his Players Championship Finals campaign against Henry Coates, the 64th and final qualifier, in Minehead from 27 to 29 November. The full bracket is already confirmed, the 64 players placed in a fixed bracket by seeding, and the complete first-round line-up is in our Players Championship Finals 2026 draw post. With a £750,000 prize fund and £130,000 for the winner, it is the last ranking event before the World Championship, and Nijman’s best chance yet to turn floor dominance into a first major title.
He has never reached a major quarter-final, and the Finals will be played before a packed, noisy Minehead crowd rather than the quiet halls where he has done his best work. But he arrives as the form player of the year and the top seed, and if he carries even a fraction of his 82 percent win rate onto the Minehead stage, he will be very hard to stop. Keep track of it on our Players Championship Finals 2026 page and the darts schedule hub. Beyond Minehead, the World Championship at Alexandra Palace awaits, and Nijman will head there inside the world’s top 15, a ranking built almost entirely on his ProTour season.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who finished top of the 2026 ProTour Order of Merit?
Wessel Nijman, with £284,500 in prize money. Ross Smith was second on £226,500, £58,000 behind, and Kevin Doets third on £181,750.
How many titles did Wessel Nijman win in 2026?
Eight ranking titles: six Players Championship events and two European Tour titles. He won around 82 percent of his matches, the highest win rate of any PDC professional, and averaged close to 97.70.
What is the difference between the ProTour Order of Merit and the Players Championship Order of Merit?
The ProTour Order of Merit counts prize money from all 49 ProTour events, covering the Players Championship floor events and the European Tour. The Players Championship Order of Merit counts only the 34 Players Championship events. Nijman topped both, with £284,500 and £160,500 respectively.
Where did Luke Littler finish on the ProTour Order of Merit?
Littler finished 33rd with £85,500, largely because he played in only five ProTour events all season, though he still won two European Tour titles. He finished outside the top 100 on the Players Championship Order of Merit, so he will not defend his Players Championship Finals title in Minehead.
Who is Wessel Nijman playing in the first round at Minehead?
As the number one seed, Nijman will play Henry Coates, the 64th and final qualifier, in the first round of the Players Championship Finals at Butlin’s Minehead from 27 to 29 November.
How many Dutch players finished in the ProTour top ten?
Five: Wessel Nijman in first, Kevin Doets in third, Danny Noppert in sixth, Jermaine Wattimena in eighth, and Niels Zonneveld in tenth.
Conclusion
The wessel nijman protour order of merit table for 2026 tells a simple story: one player was better than everyone else, for longer, than anyone else. Nijman’s £284,500, eight ranking titles, win rate of around 82 percent and an average close to 97.70 add up to the finest floor season in recent memory. Ross Smith chased him hard, Kevin Doets broke through, Luke Humphries did extraordinary things in just 16 events, and five Dutchmen filled half the top ten.
The floor season is over, and the story now moves to Minehead and then to Alexandra Palace. Nijman goes into both as the top seed and the form player of the year, but also as a man still chasing his first major quarter-final. If he finally cracks the biggest stages, 2026 will be remembered as the year Wessel Nijman became a superstar. If not, it will still be remembered as the year he owned the ProTour.
