Golf’s PGA Tour has announced that a significant format change will be implemented in 2028 as part of a new season-ending structure.
The change means the PGA Tour's best players will compete in match play to determine a Tour Champion.
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The plans include the creation of a PGA Tour Championship Series Finale and a pivot for the Tour Championship to be a separate, standalone competition in which players will face off in match play across two weeks of competition on two prestigious venues.
The tour first introduced its new competitive structure in June, which will include the PGA Tour Championship Series and the PGA Tour Challenger Series as part of a promotion and relegation model starting in 2028.
The PGA Tour Championship Series will see the tour’s top 90 performers competing regularly across a 72-hole, stroke-play tournament, with players measured through the year’s points system to find the season-long winner and set the Tour Championship field.
The new structure will also include the PGA Tour Championship Series Finale, where a season-long winner will be crowned, followed by two weeks of match play across two different courses to identify a Tour Champion.
At the conclusion of the Series Finale, the top 32 players will move on to the new-look Tour Championship.
This will mark the first time that match play will be used at the Tour Championship, and the first time the format has been contested on the tour since the 2023 WGC-Match Play event.
This represents a dramatic shift from the current format, a series of three traditional stroke play events featuring a progressive cut with fields of 70, 50, and 30 players.
The PGA Tour’s new two-tiered competitive structure stems from discussions between PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp and the tour’s advisory Future Competition Committee (FCC), headed by the legendary Tiger Woods, which is exploring ways to expand the PGA Tour’s profile.
Aimed at pitting the golfing world’s top players against each other more often, the Championship Series events will boast a purse of at least $20 million.
Rolapp said: “From the beginning, the goal of the Future Competition Committee was to create an easier-to-follow competitive model for our fans with greater consequence and a stronger season-long narrative.
“Throughout this process, we listened carefully to our fans, players, and partners. One message came through clearly: the culmination of our season should be worthy of the journey it takes to get there. The result is a season-ending structure that rewards excellence over the course of the year while building toward a reimagined Tour Championship. We are creating something different, something distinct within professional golf that can resonate far beyond it.”
Of the 15 expected annual regular season Championship Series events, 10 have already been confirmed, with the remaining five slots to be taken up by existing PGA Tour stops, or new events in new markets, identifying the likes of Boston, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC as prospective hosts.
The PGA Tour will unveil the full lineup of dates and venues for the 2028 Championship Series, including both sites for the 2028 Tour Championship, on February 22, 2027.
Rolapp has long expressed his desire to see the tour play in larger US markets. Currently, only four of the US’s 10 largest media markets feature in the tour, and the locations identified by the PGA Tour above would go some way toward ameliorating that situation.
He said: “This new format creates an exciting opportunity to showcase some of the most renowned venues in our sport, including places the modern tour has never been before.”
In the past, Rolapp has also pointed to English soccer as an example of where the promotion and relegation format has allowed for increased interest and higher playing standards.
Rolapp, an experienced sports executive who spent more than 20 years with the NFL, was named as the PGA Tour’s first-ever chief executive in June 2025, after it was confirmed that commissioner Jay Monahan would depart in 2026.
It was recently confirmed that Rolapp will take up the role of commissioner on January 1, 2027.
