Beau Greaves, Fallon Sherrock and Lisa Ashton: can a woman make history at Ally Pally?

Five women are in the 128-player field for the 2026-27 World Darts Championship, and one of them did not need a women’s place to get there. Luke Littler is the defending champion, and the darts betting outright winner market is built around him and the other seeds. Beau Greaves is not a seed, but she reached Alexandra Palace through the Pro Tour rankings, alongside the men she plays every week. Fallon Sherrock and Lisa Ashton join her, and all three are chasing a mark no woman has yet passed at the PDC World Championship.

How Beau Greaves qualified

The PDC fills 80 of the 128 places from its rankings. The top 40 on the two-year Order of Merit qualify automatically, and the next 40 come from the one-year Pro Tour rankings. Greaves, 22, qualified through the second list.

She had two other routes available. She won the 2026 Women’s World Matchplay, beating Sherrock 6-5 in the July final, and has topped the Women’s Series rankings every year since 2023. Because she qualified on ranking, the Women’s Series passed two extra places down its list, to Gemma Hayter and Vicky Pruim.

The ranking comes from her first season on the main tour. Greaves missed out at Q-School in January 2025, then earned a two-year Tour Card by finishing second on the 2025 Development Tour. In February 2026 she became the first woman to hit a nine-darter on the PDC Pro Tour, against Mensur Suljovic at Players Championship 6. In April she beat Michael Smith 8-7 in the Players Championship 11 final, the first PDC ranking title won by a woman. By August she was fourth on the Pro Tour rankings.

Greaves at Alexandra Palace

Her World Championship record is thinner than her tour record. William O’Connor beat her 3-0 on her debut in December 2022. She won three WDF world titles in a row at Lakeside from 2022 to 2024, and turned down one PDC invitation to defend that title.

She returned in December 2025 and took 22nd seed Daryl Gurney to a deciding set before losing 3-2. She beat Gurney at the Czech Darts Open in September 2026, the first match won by a woman on the PDC European Tour.

Fallon Sherrock, the only woman to win at Ally Pally

Sherrock is still the only woman to win a match at the PDC World Championship. In December 2019 she came from 2-1 down in sets to beat Ted Evetts 3-2, then beat 11th seed Mensur Suljovic 3-1. Chris Dobey ended the run in round three, winning 4-2 after Sherrock had led 2-1.

She has not won a match there since. Dave Chisnall beat her in round one in December 2025, and 2026-27 is her seventh appearance. Her best results have come elsewhere. In 2021 she became the first woman to reach a PDC televised final, losing 11-7 to Michael van Gerwen at the Nordic Darts Masters after leading 6-3. Later that year she was the first woman to reach the quarter-finals of a major, at the Grand Slam of Darts.

She qualified third on the 2026 Women’s Series rankings.

Lisa Ashton’s five first-round exits

Ashton, 56, has the longest record of the three. She won four BDO women’s world titles between 2014 and 2018, and in 2020 became the first woman to win a PDC Tour Card through Q-School.

At the PDC World Championship she has played five times and lost in round one every time. Two of those defeats were 3-2, against Adam Hunt and Ryan Meikle. Michael Smith beat her 3-0 in December 2025.

She won the 2025 Women’s World Matchplay, beating Sherrock 6-5 in the final, and qualified for 2026-27 second on the Women’s Series rankings after winning two events in 2026.

What making history would take

Sherrock’s 2019-20 run set the mark at two wins and a place in the last 32. Since the field grew to 128, every player starts in round one, so a woman would need three wins to reach the last 16.

Greaves has the strongest case of the three. She is the only woman to have won a PDC ranking title, and she has beaten a former world champion in Smith and a 2025-26 Worlds seed in Gurney on the tour in 2026. The darts betting odds today will show how far each of them is expected to go. No woman won a match at the first 128-player World Championship in 2025-26.