ATLANTA, Ga. — The PGA Tour kicked off the final week of its 2025 playoffs with a lookahead to 2026, releasing a regular-season schedule with several notable changes — some more controversial than others.
Let’s tackle 10 of ’em.
1. They’re headed back to Doral
The PGA Tour is returning to one of President Trump’s venues for the first time since he took office in 2016; the “Miami Championship” is scheduled for the week of April 27-May 3. The tournament sponsor hasn’t been finalized but the tournament has been denoted as a Signature Event, which is particularly notable because…
2. There are now nine siggies.
Signature Events, if you want full government names. But the slate of siggies is the same as it was in 2024 other than the addition of Doral, which slides into the CJ Cup Byron Nelson’s spot on the calendar. If you’re thinking to yourself, wow, that’s a lot of siggies in a short period of time, that’s because…
3. There are a lot of siggies in a short period of time!
It’ll be a busy schedule for any top players trying to play all the biggest events. The Masters will kick off a wild stretch of five featured events in six weeks: Masters, RBC Heritage (Signature), Zurich Classic, Miami Championship (Signature), Truist Championship (Signature), PGA Championship. Until now, most eligible players have teed it up in most of these events. I’d bet we’ll see more strategic skips next year. It’ll also be an odd spot on the calendar for those without siggy privileges, which I suppose is good news for the Myrtle Beach Classic, which some pros may use as a PGA Championship tune-up. But it seems like bad news for the Valero (the week before the Masters), the Zurich (will Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry really return again? Seems unlikely) and two events post-PGA. Speaking of which…
4. There’s a Dallas double.
A DFW double, to be more precise. The CJ Cup Byron Nelson will now take place the week after the PGA Championship; they’ll play at TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney, Tx. before heading over to Fort Worth and the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial. Those tournaments are in a tough spot, squeezed in between the aforementioned five-in-six stretch. The good news is players can save on air travel, at least for a week.
Before we get too deep in the summer season let’s rewind to arguably the most fun stretch on the calendar, which includes the reshuffled WM Phoenix Open the first full week of February (2-8). That’s scheduled to line up with the Super Bowl, held in Santa Clara, Calif. which could be a convenient stop for some players on their way to…
6. The Pebble-Riv double.
The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Genesis Invitational are scheduled for back-to-back weeks following the WM Phoenix Open; that’s particularly notable because they’re two siggies on arguably the Tour’s two greatest golf courses. Sunday night at the Super Bowl followed by a short drive down the coast? Nice work if you can get it.
Here’s hoping the Tour can pull off a return to Riviera, too, given the neighborhood was ravaged by wildfires last winter. The 2025 Genesis was moved to Torrey Pines; it’d be great to see the tournament provide a boost to the community if they can bring it back.
7. Quail Hollow is back.
Okay, it never left the schedule. But because Quail Hollow hosted the 2025 PGA Championship, the Truist Championship moved to Philadelphia Cricket Club. Now they’ll flip-flop, with the Truist heading back to Quail Hollow and the PGA heading to Aronimink in the Philadelphia area. That’s an ongoing oddity of the PGA Championship’s venues, which can double as PGA Tour venues, including…
8. Bellerive is back.
The St. Louis site of the 2018 PGA Championship will return as BMW Championship host. There has been plenty of chatter about rotating locations for the playoff events, which the BMW has done with great success. It should be a terrific event in 2026 too — but it’s tough to imagine a sweatier summer stretch than the Memphis-St. Louis-Atlanta back-to-back-to-back.
9. One event’s gone.
The Barracuda Championship, which had been played opposite the Open Championship in Lake Tahoe in mid-July, is nowhere to be found. That’s a bummer in the sense that 1. Lake Tahoe is cool and 2. it was the only event to use Stableford scoring, which was a fun oddity. The Corales Puntacana Championship, which had run opposite the RBC Heritage in April, is now scheduled for that Open Championship week in its place, leaving us with four alternate events rather than five.
10. Two events are moving.
The Mexico Open — which had come the week after the Genesis Invitational in late February — will join the fall portion of the schedule instead.
The Rocket Classic’s move seems even more significant; it had been the week after the Travelers (and two weeks after the U.S. Open) and now it’ll be the penultimate event on the regular season schedule. There will be three events post-Open Championship (3M Open in Minneapolis, Rocket Classic in Detroit, Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C.) which should mean a stronger field of points-hungry pros descending on Detroit Golf Club pre-playoffs.
Dylan Dethier is a senior writer for GOLF Magazine/GOLF.com. The Williamstown, Mass. native joined GOLF in 2017 after two years scuffling on the mini-tours. Dethier is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in English, and he’s the author of 18 in America, which details the year he spent as an 18-year-old living from his car and playing a round of golf in every state.
