PGA Tour ends decade-long absence from Trump-owned courses with Doral return in 2026
The Miami Championship, a $20m Signature Event scheduled for the first weekend in May 2026, will mark the 56th time the Tour has played at Trump National Doral but the first since 2016, the year Trump won his first US presidential election. That year, the WGC-Cadillac Championship was pulled from the resort and relocated to Mexico City after Cadillac ended its sponsorship.
At the time, then-commissioner Tim Finchem stressed that the decision was 'fundamentally a sponsorship issue' and not political, despite Trump's incendiary remarks on immigration and his insistence the Tour was punishing him for his first US presidential run. 'We value dollars for our players,' Finchem said in 2016. 'We were not able to secure sponsorship for Doral. From a golf standpoint, we have no issues with Donald Trump. From a political standpoint, we are neutral.'
Trump, who had spent $250m redeveloping the Doral property, publicly lashed out at the Tour and quipped that he hoped officials had 'kidnapping insurance' for the event's new Mexican host city. For the next decade, the Blue Monster fell off the PGA calendar and instead became a regular site for the upstart LIV Golf series, serving as a centerpiece in the Saudi-backed league's schedule.
Now the course returns at a moment of transition for the PGA Tour. The Miami Championship expands the roster of Signature Events to nine and sits at the heart of a crowded spring. Beginning with the Masters in April, players will face four Signature Events and two majors in a seven-week stretch, with only the Zurich Classic in New Orleans breaking the run.
Next season's PGA TOUR schedule is here!2026, we're ready for you 💪 pic.twitter.com/yRT2iRavba
'We're excited to showcase the game's greatest players competing at golf's most iconic venues,' said Brian Rolapp, the Tour's new chief executive. 'Inspired by our players and fans, we're accelerating the Tour's evolution and ushering in a new era of innovation on and off the course.'
The Miami Championship is expected to secure a title sponsor before its debut. Its addition shifts the Mexico Open into the FedExCup Fall and removes the Barracuda Championship in California, which had been played opposite the British Open.
Doral has been synonymous with PGA Tour golf since 1962, when it launched as the Doral Open. It became a World Golf Championship site in 2007 but struggled to sustain sponsorship after Trump's 2012 purchase of the property. The 2016 split was, in Finchem's words, pragmatic rather than political, though it coincided with Trump's polarizing rise.
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