The PGA Tour is blowing up the way it crowns its best players.
Golf’s premier circuit will adopt a two-tier competitive system starting in 2028, splitting its membership into a top flight and a feeder league connected by annual promotion and relegation, the tour announced Tuesday. The PGA Tour Championship Series will sit above the PGA Tour Challenger Series, with the two running side by side through the season.
The upper tier replaces the signature-events format the tour has reworked repeatedly in recent years, according to Golf Digest. The model runs on what the tour calls meritocracy, eliminating the sponsor exemptions that once gave struggling players a way in, according to the PGA Tour. (RELATED: New Information Surfaces Regarding US Open Punishment Against Joaquin Niemann)
Championship Series players will compete in roughly 23 to 24 events between February and August, each carrying a purse of at least $20 million and fields of about 120 with no sponsor exemptions, according to the tour. The Challenger Series will stage a minimum of 20 events with purses starting at $4 million and serve as the lone pathway up.
A reimagined PGA TOUR is on the horizon.
Promotion, relegation, match play … where the world’s best compete.
A fan-first model designed to deliver compelling golf with heightened consequence. https://t.co/ovRaJui001
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 23, 2026
The stakes are blunt. The top 90 in the Championship Series points race stay exempt for the next season, while a player who fails to hold his spot drops to the Challenger Series. Finishing 91st or worse means relegation. At least 20 Challenger players move up each year, and a mid-season jump is possible by winning two Challenger events or a major.
The postseason gets a rebuild too. The Tour Championship will leave its longtime East Lake home in Atlanta after 2027 and rotate among venues including Pine Valley, Cypress Point and Seminole, with match play entering the playoffs for the first time, ESPN reported. A panel chaired by Tiger Woods spent about nine months drafting the plan before the PGA Tour Policy Board and PGA Tour Enterprises Board signed off Monday.
Rory McIlroy, who dismissed an earlier version of the idea as a “glorified Korn Ferry,” softened once the details landed.
“Today’s announcement is a positive step for professional golf,” McIlroy said in a statement, according to Sky Sports.