Luke Littler has made a huge Michael van Gerwen claim before facing the Dutchmen in the PDC World Darts Championships final on Friday evening. The 17-year-old from Warrington has a second chance to achieve greatness after hammering Stephen Bunting 6-1 in the semi-final.

On his World Championships debut last year Littler reached the final but was beaten by Luke Humphries. In the 2025 tournament, the defending champion was knocked out by Peter Wright in the last-16 which denied what would have likely been a classic semi-final between Humphries and Littler.

Nonetheless, the teenager still had to battle his way past a resilient Ryan Joyce in the quarter-final before showing his quality to knock out fan-favourite Bunting in the final four. On the other side of the bracket, Van Gerwen has found his best form to defeat the likes of Callan Rydz and Chris Dobey on his way to the final.

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With the 35-year-old beating the latter on Thursday, he now has the chance to claim a first world title since 2019, but Littler is standing in his way. After his dominant win over Bunting, Littler made a telling admission about his next opponent.

"If we both turn up like we did tonight, it’s going to be really good," Littler told Sky Sports on stage. "As soon as Luke Humphries went out then that’s what everyone was looking at.

"I just had to focus on my quarter-finals and semi-finals, now I can focus on Michael [van Gerwen] tomorrow. We all know he’s hunting for that next world title, I’m hunting for my first."

He added: "I don’t know [what feels different to last year]. Obviously I’ve played a lot better, I’ve won plenty of titles leading up to this but that is what we do. We lead up to the big one. There’s majors all year round but I can’t wait for tomorrow night."