Luke Littler will make his first tournament appearance since winning the World Darts Championship at next week's Bahrain Darts Masters, it has been confirmed.

The 17-year-old is still celebrating his latest and greatest achievement, having beaten Michael van Gerwen to lift the Sid Waddell Trophy at Alexandra Palace earlier this month.

His next outing will come in the Middle East, with Littler among the 16 players competing in the Bahrain Darts Masters. The event will take place over two days, starting on January 16 and finishing on January 17.

Littler is one of eight PDC representatives, with the teenage superstar joined by Luke Humphries, Rob Cross, Stephen Bunting, Gerwyn Price, Chris Dobey, Nathan Aspinall and Peter Wright.

The other eight players selected from Asia are Lourence Ilagan, Paolo Nebrida, Alexis Toylo, Nitin Kumar, Lok Yin Lee, Xiaochen Zong, Abdulla Saeed and Basem Mahmood.

A number of big-name players will be absent, with Van Gerwen among those not taking part in the tournament. The likes of Gary Anderson, Michael Smith, Dave Chisnall, Mike De Decker and Damon Heta have also been left off the entry list.

Littler will go into the event with high hopes of defending his title, having won last year's Bahrain Darts Masters on his debut appearance. Another triumph would be the perfect way to celebrate his 18th birthday, which is coming up later this month.

A few weeks later, Littler will return to the Premier League as the defending champion. He has already made it clear that he is targeting back-to-back titles, having demonstrated that he is good enough to beat any player in the world.

"If I can go back to back, it’d mean the world," he told Sky Sports. "Leading up to it [last year], I thought if I could be in the top four I’d be happy, but obviously, I finished first because of the way I played.

"I will just have the same mindset going into it. If you make the play-offs, that’s all that matters and just give it your all at the O2.

"I would have loved to hit a nine-darter in the World Championships and obviously try and end 2024 with five nine-darters, but it wouldn’t be, so obviously that’s another record that I can try and break for years and years."