Luke Littler's Bahrain Masters schedule as world champion returns to action
LUKE Littler can now plot his way through his first tournament as world darts champion.
The PDC have confirmed the draw and schedule for this week’s Bahrain Darts Masters, which gets underway on Thursday with Warrington’s teenage sensation looking to defend the title he won last year.
In what will be his first match since defeating Michael Van Gerwen to win the 2025 World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace on January 3, Littler will take on PDC Asia champion Lourence Ilagan in the first round.
Littler’s meeting with the Filipino thrower will be the sixth of eight matches to be played on Thursday with the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final to follow on Friday.
The action gets underway at 5pm UK time on Thursday (8pm local time) while Friday’s games will have a slightly earlier start time of 4pm UK time, with all games being shown live on ITV4.
Should Littler be successful, he will face either Gerwyn Price or Lok Yin Lee in the quarter-finals.
2025 Bahrain Darts Masters, schedule of play
Thursday, January 16 – 2000 Local Time (1700 GMT)
First Round
Rob Cross v Paolo Nebrida
Gerwyn Price v Lok Yin Lee
Stephen Bunting v Nitin Kumar
Chris Dobey v Basem Mahmood
Luke Humphries v Abdulla Saeed
Luke Littler v Lourence Ilagan
Peter Wright v Alexis Toylo
Nathan Aspinall v Xiaochen Zong
Friday, January 17 (1900 local time, 1600 GMT)
Quarter-finals, semi-finals and final
Format
First round - Best of 11 legs
Quarter-finals - Best of 11 legs
Semi-finals - Best of 13 legs
Final - Best of 15 legs
