Stephen Bunting beat Luke Humphries 6-3 in Sheffield on Thursday to close out his Premier League campaign with his second nightly win of 2026 and a fifth-place finish in the standings. The final was tight only until Bunting pulled away late, then finished with seven 180s and a 106.37 average.
It was a sharp turn for Bunting, who had not won a nightly match since night four in Belfast. He had already done the hard part earlier in the evening, beating Jonny Clayton 6-3 in the quarter-finals and then coming from 2-0 down to defeat Gerwyn Price in the semi-finals. His 161 checkout was the first of three straight 100-plus finishes in that comeback win, a run of scoring that carried straight into the final.
The last leg in Sheffield summed up the night. At 5-3 up, Bunting started with six perfect darts before wrapping up the leg in 12 darts, one more burst that underlined how cleanly he was throwing when the match was on the line. Humphries, meanwhile, could not find the opening he needed despite averaging 105.24 in a last-leg quarter-final victory over Michael van Gerwen and then beating Luke Littler 6-1 in the semi-finals.
That final did more than hand Bunting a trophy. It moved him above Gian van Veen and Michael van Gerwen to finish fifth overall, and it also pushed Humphries up to third in the season standings despite the loss. That mattered because it spared Humphries from a semi-final against Littler on finals night at London’s O2 Arena next Thursday. Humphries will meet Jonny Clayton in the semis, while Gerwyn Price faces Littler in the other tie.
For Bunting, the Sheffield result was the last nightly event of his Premier League run, and he sounded relieved as much as proud afterward. “I was probably a bit hard on myself. I’m up to fifth! I’m so happy with that,” he said, adding that people had written him off and said he should not be in the competition. “I want to be in this Premier League for years to come. That was a massive statement from me.”
Littler, for his part, had been aiming to break his own record points total and number of nightly wins in the Premier League, but he missed both targets on the final night of league-stage play. The standings now decide everything at the O2, where the season will end next Thursday with the four remaining players split by the Sheffield results.
