DartsNews Podcast | “On any given day, he can beat anyone” - Michael van Gerwen’s hopes of another world title put in the spotlight

Michael van Gerwen’s latest return to the winner’s circle has reopened one of darts’ most familiar debates, with DartsNews Podcast cohosts and expert analysts Kieran Wood and Nicolas Gayer asking whether the Dutchman can still turn flashes of vintage brilliance into another World Championship title.

Van Gerwen’s Players Championship 15 triumph in Leicester was the kind of result that instantly pulls him back into the conversation. It was his first PDC ranking title for more than a year and his first floor title since October 2024, sealed with an 8-5 win over Dirk van Duijvenbode in the final. Earlier in the day, he had averaged 122.34 in a 7-0 semi-final demolition of Martin Schindler, who himself averaged above 108 without getting a single dart at double.

That performance was a reminder of what still makes Van Gerwen so dangerous. The old ceiling has not disappeared. The harder question is whether he can still find it often enough, across long-format matches and multiple pressure nights, to win the sport’s biggest title again. “When you see him play like that, it's ridiculous he hasn't won a title in so long,” Wood said on the latest episode of the DartsNews Podcast. “Because when he's on, he is still one of the best players in the world. And for some people, he's the best player of all time, isn't he?”

Gayer was just as emphatic about the level Van Gerwen showed in Leicester, adding: “When he is like that, he is unbeatable.”

Van Gerwen’s best darts still creates a different kind of pressure. Schindler’s semi-final average would have won plenty of matches on the floor, but against a player hitting Van Gerwen’s gear, it left him nowhere to go.

“I think all the statistics you can read out of that, Martin Schindler averaging 108 and not even getting one single out of the double,” Gayer said. “It's just phenomenal.”

Wood put the same point more simply: “Yeah, he's going up at better than 15-dart leg pace, basically. And he's not even getting a chance.”

That was not the only sign of a serious title-winning level. Van Gerwen averaged over 106 across his final four matches of the event, turning the win into more than just one spectacular semi-final. For one day in Leicester, it looked like the old Van Gerwen rhythm had returned: relentless scoring, ruthless timing and almost no room for opponents to breathe.

For that reason, Gayer described Van Gerwen in that mood as “near unplayable”, and it is still hard to disagree. There are younger stars now, there are more frequent high averages across the sport, and the field is deeper than it was when Van Gerwen was at his peak. Yet when he hits that gear, the threat still feels familiar.

Van Gerwen is no longer the week-to-week force he was in the mid-2010s, but he still owns a level that can trouble anyone in the world.

Van Gerwen has already done that three times, winning the PDC World Championship in 2014, 2017 and 2019. Since that third title, he has still remained a major Ally Pally figure, but the pattern has changed. He has reached three further World Championship finals since his last title, losing in 2020, 2023 and 2025.

The World Darts Championship though, is different from almost every other event in darts. Whilst Van Gerwen can still produce a level capable of beating anyone, Ally Pally has increasingly become a tournament where the eventual champion is usually the player setting the standard in the sport at that exact moment.

Surprise semi-finalists can emerge. Surprise finalists can happen too. But the title itself rarely lands with someone who has simply timed one great run from outside the very top tier.

During the Hotseat segment, Gayer asked Wood directly whether Van Gerwen would ever win another world title. Wood’s answer was blunt. “I don't think he'll win another World title, no,” he said. “He's definitely got TV titles in him, but the World Championship seems to always go to the best player in the world, and I don't think he is the best player in the world.”

Wood then began working through recent winners to underline the point. “Like, when was the last World Championship winner where you thought, oh, that's actually a surprising winner?” he added. “I was just trying to think this on the fly now. Obviously got Littler back-to-back when he was best in the world, Humphries, Michael Smith was World No. 1, Gerwyn Price...”

That exchange sharpened the central question around Van Gerwen. It is not whether he can still hit a level capable of beating the best players in the world. Leicester showed that he can. The question is whether he can be the best player in the world across a full Ally Pally campaign, because recent history suggests that is usually what the tournament demands.

Van Gerwen’s 2026 season has already carried both sides of the argument. He won the Bahrain Darts Masters in January, beating Gian van Veen in an all-Dutch final, then later returned to the ranking-title circle in Leicester. Those are not the results of a player who has vanished from the elite picture.

At the same time, his Premier League Darts campaign has told a different story. Van Gerwen missed Finals Night for the second year in a row, an outcome that would once have felt almost unthinkable for the seven-time Premier League champion.

That contrast is exactly why every strong Van Gerwen week now creates the same debate. Is it the start of a proper return, or simply another reminder that his best game still exists somewhere inside a less predictable version of himself?

Wood pointed to the problem after Van Gerwen failed to back up his Players Championship 15 title run at the next event. “The problem is, though, that at the next event, he can't back it up. He goes out first round,” Wood said.

Van Gerwen can still flatten opponents. He can still dominate a day. What he has not yet shown with the same regularity is the old ability to stack those days together until the rest of the field starts to feel like it is playing for second.

Gayer put that uncertainty directly to Wood. "We always tend to say, oh, he's back now. This is Michael van Gerwen. Is he really back? Is that like any sign of him coming back to his best or being a title contender again? Or is it just one single highlight that doesn't really influence the rest of the season?”

Wood’s verdict landed in the middle. Van Gerwen is not back to the force that ruled darts through his peak years, but he remains too dangerous to dismiss. “I mean, he's not back in terms of what he was in the mid-2010s,” Wood said. “But you always have to consider Michael van Gerwen as a title contender, because he can do things like he did, with a 122 average and the average throughout the day and all that. On any single given day, he can beat anyone. But doing it day after day, game after game, where he sometimes comes unstuck.”

That is the Van Gerwen question in its simplest form. Nobody doubts the ceiling. Nobody doubts the threat. The only doubt is whether the version that can still destroy elite opposition on one day can survive the full grind of another World Championship campaign.

For now, Leicester proved that Van Gerwen remains impossible to ignore. It did not prove that another world title is coming.