ATLANTA — Trump National Doral is back on the PGA Tour schedule in 2026, with the Miami-area course granted a signature event that is sure to test how often the top golfers want to play during an extraordinary spring of five big tournaments in a six-week stretch.
Doral long was considered the start of the Florida swing, a can’t-miss stop on the season’s circuit as the PGA Tour began attracting international stars. Next year it will be a $20 million signature event the first weekend in May, part of a stretch that starts with the Masters, ends with the PGA Championship and has three signature events in the four weeks in between.
“We’re excited to showcase the game’s greatest players competing at golf’s most iconic venues,” said Brian Rolapp, the tour’s new CEO.
Rory McIlroy missed three signature events this year, one of them at the start at Kapalua, the Maui course he rarely plays because he typically begins his year in the Middle East and on the Europe-based DP World Tour.
“It’s quite a bit of a workload for the players to play that much golf in that stretch,” McIlroy, who completed the career Grand Slam when he won the Masters in April, said Wednesday. “But I think it’s not as if we’re having to travel halfway around the world to do it. These are all pretty easy stops on the East Coast for the most part.”
It also means players not eligible for those big events would have only two tournaments to play — one of them with a minimal purse — in that six-week stretch.
There’s virtually no change from the 2025 schedule except for a few tournaments changing dates, including the Mexico Open moving to the fall and moving the opposite-field event in the Dominican Republic from March (against the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Florida) to July (against the British Open).
The PGA Tour lost the Barracuda Championship in Truckee, California, which had been opposite the British Open. It was the only tournament that used the modified Stableford scoring system.
Still to be determined is a title sponsor for what now is called the Miami Championship.
Doral first became part of the PGA Tour schedule in 1962. Its tournament became a World Golf Championship in 2007, and then the PGA Tour struggled to find a title sponsor when Donald Trump bought the resort.
It moved away from Trump Doral to Mexico City after 2016, prompting Trump — the presumed Republican nominee at the time — to say, “I hope they have kidnapping insurance.” He won a first term as U.S. president later that year, lost a reelection bid in 2020, and is now in his second term in the White House.
The famed “Blue Monster” at Trump Doral then became a site for the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League each of the last four years. Miami is not part of the LIV schedule for 2026, although Trump National near Washington will be used.
When the concept of these limited field, big-money tournaments was formed, the idea was for all the top players on the PGA Tour to compete against each other.
“I go back and forth on that. I’m a believer in the sense of all of us playing in all these events is kind of the purpose of them,” Justin Thomas said.
Thomas, a two-time winner of the PGA Championship, also said some courses, no matter the purse, are not a good fit for some players. McIlroy said early in the year he never felt he played well at Harbour Town Golf Links on South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island. Thomas said he finally began skipping the World Golf Championship held in China for that reason.
“So if there are places that I think people look at that way, then you have to do what’s best for that particular person,” Thomas said. “Obviously, the perfect model would be for all of us to be at all the events as often as possible.”
Tommy Fleetwood said one way to look at it is a big stretch that could change someone’s entire season if they play well.
“I think we all have an option to play or not play whatever we want, so you can schedule it however you want,” he said. “If you want to play all of them, what an amazing stretch of opportunities for you in terms of big events.”
The spring stretch isn’t the only busy part of the schedule.
The PGA Tour season begins a week later than usual, on Jan. 8 at Kapalua, giving players a little more time after the holidays to get ready.
That means the Phoenix Open, which prefers to end on Super Bowl Sunday, will be Feb. 5-8. The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am moves back a week followed by the Genesis Invitational, both $20 million signature events.
Previously, the Mexico Open was after the West Coast Swing, a week before the start of the Florida Swing. Now the Cognizant Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, will follow two signature events at Pebble Beach in Northern California and Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, and precede two more big events in the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship, held at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
Scottie Scheffler, who has been No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking for more than two years, does not play the Truist Championship in early May because he wants to support his hometown events in the Dallas area. The question for the PGA Tour is how many other players will not want to play that much amid the first two majors of the year — the Masters and the PGA Championship.
In another move, the Rocket Classic in Detroit goes from the last week in June — two weeks after the U.S. Open — to the first weekend in August, two weeks after the British Open.
The fall portion of the 2026 schedule has not been released.