Our 2025 season might well have a couple of months to run but we never stand still here on the DP World Tour and it was therefore with great excitement and anticipation that we announced our 2026 global schedule a couple of weeks’ ago during the week of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
Featuring a minimum of 42 Race to Dubai tournaments in 25 different countries, the schedule will once again comprise three distinct phases, beginning with five ‘Global Swings’ followed by the ‘Back 9’, with the season then culminating with the ‘DP World Tour Play-Offs’ here in the UAE in November. In addition, members will compete for a record total prize fund of $157.5 million (outside the Major Championships) on our Tour next season.
Once again, our region will play a hugely significant part in shaping the destiny of the 2026 Race to Dubai champion with six tournaments scheduled for our shores.
The first four come in a consecutive run in January and February and start with the return of the Dubai Invitational at the Dubai Creek Resort which will return to the schedule after alternating with the Team Cup during the current 2025 season. Last played in 2024, it produced a memorable tournament then with Dubai resident Tommy Fleetwood winning by a shot from recently crowned Grand Slam champion Rory McIlroy and five-time DP World Tour champion Thriston Lawrence. We hope for similar excitement this time around.
Following that is the 37th staging of the Hero Dubai Desert Classic at the Emirates Golf Club from January 22 to 25 and the Bahrain Championship, making its third appearance on our global schedule from January 29 to February 1. Rounding out this particular month-long spell will be an as yet unconfirmed Middle East event which will run from February 5 to 8 and which will also be the fourth event in our 2026 International Swing.
While the UAE will not play host to any specific events in our Back 9 later in the year, our Tour title partner DP World will have an impact as it sponsors one of the new events on the calendar this year which will return next year, namely the DP World India Championship at Delhi Golf Club in New Delhi from October 15-18. The two new events in 2026 are the Corales Puntacana Championship in the Dominican Republic from July 16 to19 and the Estrella Damm Catalunya Championship in Barcelona from May 7 to 10.
The Corales Puntacana Championship on the PGA TOUR takes the place in our schedule of the Barracuda Championship and once again will see the DP World Tour given 50 playing spots for our members, as will be the case in the ISCO Championship in Kentucky a week earlier in July.
The Estrella Damm Catalunya Championship – the first tournament on the European Swing – will be played at Real Club de Golf El Prat and its existence has come about following the agreement announced earlier this summer that the 2031 Ryder Cup will be played at Camiral in Catalunya, with Spain becoming the first continental European country to host the biennial contest twice. In addition, El Prat will host a DP World Tour event for the first time since the 2015 Open de España.
Finally, as always, the 2026 season will end here in the UAE with our two play-off events, the Abu Dhabi Championship from November 5 to 8 and the DP World Tour Championship from November 12 to 15, where next season’s Race to Dubai champion will be crowned.
Of course, we still have that excitement to come this year with six tournaments left to play after this week’s Ryder Cup in the United States. Last year’s champion Rory McIlroy is still out in front but in close pursuit are England’s Marco Penge following his victory in last month’s Danish Golf Championship and France’s Adrien Saddier following his back-to-back top five finishes in both the Amgen Irish Open and the BMW PGA Championship. It is all to play for.
