‘Should have spent Easter with the kids’ – Top darts star left fuming after Euro Tour travel ‘absolute joke’

The Passport Queue That Broke the Camel’s Back

Easter weekend. Family time. Chocolate eggs. A relaxing few days at home with the kids.

Not if you’re a professional darts player on the PDC European Tour. Instead, you’re standing in a two-and-a-half-hour passport queue at a European airport, watching your phone battery drain, wondering why exactly you made the trip at all.

The travel chaos affecting British darts players on the European Tour has been bubbling away all season — and this Easter, with the German Darts Grand Prix running across Saturday, Sunday and Easter Monday in Munich, it finally boiled over completely.

Brexit: The Word Nobody Wants to Say — But Everyone Is Thinking

The root cause of all this misery isn’t the PDC’s scheduling, the prize money, or the distance. It’s something far more politically charged. Chris Dobey pointed directly at it after the Belgian Darts Open: “I think we shouldn’t have left the EU. I think that’s the big problem. It’s the same for most of the British lads.”

Since Brexit, British players have lost the right to use EU passport e-gates. Instead of breezing through in seconds like their Dutch, Belgian, and German rivals, British pros must join the manual passport check queues — which at busy European airports, over a busy holiday weekend, have become a genuine nightmare.

Nathan Aspinall vented on social media: “Another week, another Euro Tour, another f*** off wait to get through passport control.”

Jonny Clayton, one of the most travelled players on tour, had an even more alarming message after Brussels. “Two-hour wait in Brussels Airport,” he posted. “This could be the last European Tour of the year!”

And Dobey painted the full picture of what these journeys have become. “It’s not nice because we had to wait over two and a half hours just for the passport. It was the same in Poland a few weeks back, so hopefully something can change, and we can enjoy these European Tours again.”

Easter in Munich — The Worst Possible Weekend for It

The German Darts Grand Prix has always been a logistical challenge. As has become tradition, the European Tour lands in Munich over the Easter weekend, with the Zenith Arena hosting three days of action from Saturday through Easter Monday.

For players with young families, that’s not just a travel inconvenience. That’s Easter morning. Easter egg hunts. Being the parent who didn’t make it home. And when you add a two-and-a-half-hour passport queue on top of an already grinding travel schedule, suddenly the £35,000 winner’s prize starts to feel less appealing.

Dobey had already flagged it was coming. After the Belgian Darts Open, he said: “Easter weekend in Munich is probably going to be the same, so I don’t know. It’s tempting to think about skipping it, but I want to play in them all.”

In the end, the withdrawals told their own story. A substantial spate of elite player withdrawals dramatically reshaped the competitive landscape, with half a dozen seeds electing against travelling to Munich — including reigning World Champion Luke Littler and two-time winner of the event, Luke Humphries.

One Man’s Solution: Just Drive

While his British colleagues were venting on social media, Australian Damon Heta offered a very different perspective on the whole situation. Heta explained that he has been travelling by car between tournaments and told fellow pros to simply “get on with it,” adding he’d probably just need “a Wham Burger or some French Cries or something.”

Easy to say when you’re not leaving three kids behind on Easter Monday to sit in an airport queue for three hours.

The Bigger Question for the PDC

This isn’t just moaning. There’s a genuine structural problem here that the PDC needs to address. Hectic, packed schedules mixed with travel being much harder is a recipe for more pullouts — and the question is being asked: could we see more players giving up on the European Tours entirely?

Dobey underlined what’s at stake for the players: “You love playing on the European Tour. That’s where the big money is on the rankings, so you don’t want to miss them. Hopefully we can get it sorted and start using it again.”

The European Tour is a vital part of the PDC ecosystem — 15 events, big prize money, and the pathway to the European Championship in Dortmund. But if British players are spending three hours in passport queues, missing Easter with their families, and watching their continental rivals waltz through e-gates in 30 seconds, something has to give.

Some players are already voting with their feet. Easter 2026 in Munich just showed exactly how many of them are reaching the end of their tether.