Florian Hempel and Paul Krohne celebrate qualification for the European Darts Trophy in Göttingen
PDCSunday, 01 March 2026 at 12:15
On Saturday, two Host Nation Qualifiers for the European Tour events in Göttingen and Munich were held in Hildesheim. As with every European Tour event, four spots go to players from the host nation — in this case to German entrants.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, numerous players battled for the coveted tickets. In the end, eight names were set to represent Germany on the big PDC stage.
Hempel, Horvat, Krohne, and Preis bound for Göttingen
In the first tournament of the day, Florian Hempel, Dragutin Horvat, Paul Krohne, and Florian Preis secured their places for Göttingen.
Germany’s most touted darts prospect celebrates his European Tour debut: Florian Preis
The qualification of 18-year-old Florian Preis is particularly noteworthy. In a stretch of strong performances, he capped his development with a European Tour debut. Hempel returns to the big stage after losing his PDC Tour Card, giving him the chance to step back into the beloved TV spotlight after a longer absence.
Horvat dominated the bulk of his matches and marks his return to the PDC stage in 2026 as well. Krohne continued his impressive winning run. Despite not holding a Tour Card, he keeps making a strong case to be among Germany’s in-form players — the European Tour qualification reinforces that impression.
Added spice came from the early exit of Ricardo Pietreczko. Germany’s number three used the right, as a Tour Card holder, to play one Host Nation Qualifier per season. But the favorite fell in round two — losing 2-6 to Florian Preis.
Four more spots awarded for Munich
The second tournament of the day was for the Munich berths. Jan Schmidt, Marcel Hausotter, Kevin Troppmann, and Finn Behrens qualified there.
Behrens thus returns to Munich after qualifying for last year’s German Darts Grand Prix in the Bavarian capital. Troppmann will appear on a European Tour stage for the third season in a row. Hausotter will make his third outing at this level. For Jan Schmidt, however, it will be a debut night — his first time on a PDC stage.
One storyline continued in the second tournament. Matthias Ehlers also used the entry right for Tour Card holders, but — like Pietreczko before him — went out to Florian Preis. Preis then played his way through to the deciding match, but missed the qualification double in the final against Behrens.
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- ah ok, that helps put it in context, cheersMrMarkWatsonnonotthatone28-02-2026
- Any IDeaS.....richieburnettrocks28-02-2026
- I deserve it I am the greatest I am the people's champion I believe I will win the Premier League because I believe I am the best because honestly I am the people's champion and I honestly made the fans come tonight because I am honestly the greatest and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Oh shut up you pathetic pandering hideously ugly fat waste of space! Fatty Bunting should be more sincere and humbly accept he needed that instead of I this and I that.richieburnettrocks28-02-2026
- Wright's wife DEMANDS he continues so IT can rook every last penny from him. Commentary beckons.richieburnettrocks28-02-2026
- i can't answer this definitively, but i can make some suggestions. firstly, these are essentially just glorified qualifiers for TV events which double as helping the lesser players on tour make a living, but they aren't really considered that significant. they weren't even streamed until the past decade or so. most casual fans don't even know they exist and getting an audience in might be difficult. i'm assuming they're currently quite cheap to run and they would need to sell a lot of tickets to justify opening them up into more of a spectacle. they're held on weekdays when most people are at work anyway and there's no room on the calendar to put most of them on weekends. the logistics of presenting it to an audience would also be tricky given that they have to get through 7 rounds containing 128 players in a single day, using loads of stages simultaneously. maybe the uk open could be used as a template but it'd need to be even more condensed into a short time period, and even with the uk open it's hard to follow most of the games. the venues they're currently held at wouldn't cater for turning this into a public event as they're pretty small, so they'd need to hire much bigger venues 30 times in places around the country. it just probably isn't feasible. i also suspect the players don't really want to play in front of drunk audiences in every single domestic tournament, they already have the euro tour, world series and majors for that. the players championship is basically a way for players to demonstrate they're ready to make the step up to those levels of competition.colt26-02-2026
- Hi, can someone explain why the Players Championship takes place behind closed doors? I've been watching the big championships on and off for decades, but only just started taking a keener interest in the game, and this strange looking competition is a bit of a head scratcher to me at the moment.MrMarkWatsonnonotthatone25-02-2026
- Not Noppy. Get Beau in.medinabello25-02-2026
- If I was noppert,I'd say,sod you lot. You don't think I'm good enough,but suddenly,I can be a replacement? What a load of rubbish. Either you're in,or not. I keep saying,it's a pointless league,just to get people on seats,and beer down their necks. Scrap the whole thingrick6724-02-2026
- Exactly! Did the Glasgow punters get a partial refund for missing out on a potentially explosive match up? I don't know but I doubt it. Given the existing set up, how about this? Four reserves, one European based player to cover the four overseas rounds (including Dublin) and three UK based players to cover four UK rounds each (including Belfast). If the number of continental rounds changed to four for instance then Dublin could be transferred to the UK players allocation for convenience. All reserves should have their travel and accommodation costs covered and to make it worth their while, if they are not used, the reserve could play a match with a LOCAL non tour card holding player between the semi finals and final. This local player would be chosen by a prior qualifying tournament. The prize for this game could be £/euros 1000 or 2000 as the reserve could be spending his time and effort doing an exhibition instead not that I know what the commercial rate for an exhibition is! If the reserve is used in the main competition then the winner and the runner up of the qualifier can play. This could generate additional local interest and publicity. Obviously this doesn't cover every "what if" scenario i.e. What if two main players pull out? Maybe a second of the four reserves could be chosen at random? What do you think?OldShakey23-02-2026
- what a load of crocmedinabello19-02-2026
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