2026 Platinum
Table of Contents
- The 154th Open at a glance
- A championship with 166 years behind it
- Royal Birkdale, and the champions it has made
- What has changed since 2017
- Eight days, not four
- Tickets: where things stand
- Where to watch The Open on TV in the UK
- The players to watch
- The prize money
- What to wear as a spectator
- Glenmuir and The Open
- Come Sunday evening
The 154th Open at a glance
Championship: The 154th Open Championship
Championship play: Thursday 16 to Sunday 19 July 2026
Venue: Royal Birkdale Golf Club, Southport, Merseyside
Course: 7,223 yards, par 70
Field: 156 players
Organiser: The R&A
This is Royal Birkdale’s eleventh Open and its first since 2017, when Jordan Spieth played the closing stretch in birdie, eagle, birdie, birdie and left Matt Kuchar with nowhere to go. Since Birkdale joined the rota in 1954, no course except St Andrews has hosted the Championship more often. Southport has waited nine years for its return, and the town has spent the last two of them getting ready for it.
A championship with 166 years behind it
The Open began at Prestwick, on the Ayrshire coast, in October 1860. Eight professionals played three rounds of a twelve-hole course in a single day. That makes it the oldest of the four majors by 35 years, since the US Open did not follow until 1895, and it means the players teeing off at Birkdale on Thursday are competing for something that predates the modern game almost entirely.
The line usually trotted out is that it has run without interruption apart from the wars. That is not quite true, and the truth is better. There was no Championship in 1871, because Young Tom Morris had won three in a row and was allowed to keep the Challenge Belt outright, which left nothing to play for. The clubs subscribed for a replacement, a silver claret jug, and it was first presented in 1873. The two world wars accounted for eleven further years, and in 2020 the Championship was cancelled for the pandemic, the first time it had been lost since 1945.
So the trophy every winner lifts on Sunday exists only because a nineteen-year-old was too good for the previous one. Golf keeps its history close, and that is one of the better stories in it.
Glenmuir was founded in Lanark in 1891, three decades after that first meeting at Prestwick, and we have been designing golf knitwear there ever since. Links weather has shaped what we make from the beginning, because a garment built for a Scottish coast has to cope with wind, rain and sudden sunshine inside the same round. Those are precisely the conditions The Open has been testing its champions against since 1860.
Royal Birkdale, and the champions it has made
Royal Birkdale was founded in 1889 and moved to its present ground among the dunes south of Southport in 1897. The layout owes most to the Hawtree family, who shaped and reshaped it across three generations. Above the 18th green sits the Art Deco clubhouse, built in 1935 to a design by the local architect George E. Tonge, who won the commission in a competition. It looks like a liner that has run aground in the marram grass, and it is one of the most recognisable buildings in championship golf.
The holes run through the valleys between the dunes rather than over them, which gives Birkdale two qualities the players tend to praise. The fairways are unusually flat for a links, so a good drive is rewarded rather than kicked sideways on a whim. And the dunes themselves make natural grandstands, which is why the atmosphere here is as good as anywhere on the rota.
The roll of honour is remarkable. Peter Thomson won in 1954 and again in 1965, Arnold Palmer in 1961, Lee Trevino in 1971, Johnny Miller in 1976, Tom Watson in 1983, Ian Baker-Finch in 1991, Mark O’Meara in 1998, Pádraig Harrington in 2008 and Spieth in 2017. Every one of them bar Baker-Finch won multiple majors. Both Thomson and Watson collected their fifth Claret Jug here.
The place is thick with moments. A plaque near what is now the 16th green marks Palmer’s recovery from heavy rough in 1961, when the hole played as the 15th. In 1969 the course hosted the Ryder Cup match that ended with Jack Nicklaus conceding Tony Jacklin’s putt on the last, the finest thing anyone has done on a golf course without hitting a shot. In 1976 a nineteen-year-old Spaniard finished joint runner-up behind Johnny Miller and announced himself to the game. Sunderland of Scotland went on to dress Seve Ballesteros for much of what followed. And at the 17th in 2008, Harrington hit the 5-wood that all but settled his second Open.
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What has changed since 2017
This is the part most previews skip, and it matters more than anything else this week. Royal Birkdale has been through the most substantial change between two Opens of any venue in the modern era.
The club brought in Tom Mackenzie of Mackenzie & Ebert, and the work was carried out in phases from autumn 2023 through to spring 2025. Every hole was touched. Bunkers were rebuilt, relocated or removed altogether, tees were reconstructed, green surrounds were mown closer. The course now plays to 7,223 yards and a par of 70, only 67 yards longer than it was for Spieth. The length is not the story. The architecture is.
Five changes will decide how the week looks:
- The 5th is a new hole in all but postcode. It now plays as a 321-yard par 4 with the green visible from the tee, where before it was a blind, forgettable dogleg. It is genuinely drivable in the right wind, and the sensible play is a lay-up to around 200 yards. Long is dead.
- The 7th has been shortened to 151 yards. The green has been rebuilt around three feet higher and now sits on a pedestal above the deepest bunkers on the property. Mackenzie calls it a precision par 3. The old donut bunker on the left has survived, island and all.
- The old par-3 14th has gone, converted into a short game area. The par 5 that used to be the 15th has been rebuilt and renumbered as the 14th, stretching to 602 yards with a perched green and a severe fall away to the left.
- There is a brand new par 3 at the 15th, 241 yards, the longest one-shot hole on the course, played straight at the clubhouse in the distance. It is the hole Birkdale never had. The four par 3s now measure 219, 151, 186 and 241 yards, four different clubs and four different questions.
- The 18th tee has been moved a long way left. The hole no longer doglegs. It runs dead straight at the clubhouse, and the fairway bunkers are now squarely in play for anyone reaching for driver. Expect a good deal of iron off that tee on Sunday afternoon.
The one hole nobody has laid a finger on is the 12th, the 186-yard par 3 with two deep bunkers guarding the front right and a punishing run-off behind. It was already one of the best short holes in championship golf. It remains so.
Eight days, not four
Championship play runs from Thursday 16 to Sunday 19 July, but the gates at Royal Birkdale open on Sunday 12 July, and this year the practice days carry a programme of their own for the first time.
On Monday 13 July a twelve-player Last-Chance Qualifier decides the final place in the field, a new route into The Open and a proper bit of theatre for anyone on the grounds early in the week. On Tuesday 14 July the Heroes Classic brings past Champion Golfers back to Birkdale for an exhibition alongside a handful of invited guests. Wednesday is the last chance for the field to walk the new holes before it counts.
After 36 holes the field is cut to the leading 70 players and ties, which turns a leaderboard of 156 into the handful who can realistically win. Tee times go out in waves from early morning through the afternoon, with the final pairing, and the overnight leader, last out on Sunday.
One practical note for anyone attending in the early part of the week. The R&A has confirmed that the World Cup semi-finals on Tuesday 14 and Wednesday 15 July will not be shown on the course, so plan the evening accordingly.
Tickets: where things stand
The ticket ballot for the 154th Open closed on 25 July last year, and applicants were notified in waves through August and September. General admission is now sold out across all four Championship days. There is no walk-up sale at the gate, and there never realistically was.
What remains open is hospitality and packages. Royal Birkdale is the first venue for The Open Experiences, the R&A’s new range of ticket and hospitality options, and a limited number of packages have been available alongside Ticket Plus and ticket-inclusive accommodation. Everything legitimate runs through theopen.com. Anything else, particularly resale above face value from a third party, should be treated with the scepticism it deserves.
Where to watch The Open on TV in the UK
Sky Sports is the exclusive home of The Open in the UK and Ireland, with more than 75 hours of live coverage across the seven days of Championship week. Coverage runs on Sky Sports Golf and Sky Sports Main Event, and the early starts are worth knowing about, because the first groups are away not long after dawn.
Thursday 16 July, first round: from 6.30am on Sky Sports Golf and Sky Sports Main Event
Friday 17 July, second round: from 6.30am on Sky Sports Golf and Sky Sports Main Event
Saturday 18 July, third round: from 9am on Sky Sports Golf, and from 11am on Sky Sports Main Event
Sunday 19 July, final round: from 8am on Sky Sports Golf, and from 10am on Sky Sports Main Event
All times are BST and every one of them is subject to change, since links weather has a habit of rearranging a tee sheet at short notice.
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There is a nightly free-to-air highlights programme on BBC Two for anyone who cannot give up a working Thursday to the golf, and a daily one-hour highlights show on Sky Sports Golf. Sky carries at least fifteen hours of action on each of the first two days, with four featured group feeds every round, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, plus a new feed dedicated to a single marquee player through the Thursday and Friday afternoons. Those extra streams sit on Sky Sports+ and the Sky Sports app. Non-Sky households can stream the coverage without a contract through NOW.
Two free options are worth knowing. The Open Radio streams from theopen.com, starting with a preview programme on Tuesday 14 July and running through to Sunday’s finish, and it is the best company for a round of your own on Saturday morning. And the R&A app carries live scoring, tee times and near-live clips wherever you are.
Beyond these shores, The Open reaches more than 200 countries and territories through around 35 broadcast partners, with over 48 hours of world feed coverage across the week. In the United States, coverage runs on NBC, USA Network and Peacock.
When to be in front of the television on Thursday
The full draw is on theopen.com, and it changes every day, so there is little sense in printing all 52 groups here. These are the ones worth setting an alarm for.
The first shot of the 154th Open will be struck at 6.35am by Matthew Baldwin, who is a member at Royal Birkdale and who played his way in through Final Qualifying. A member of the host club opening his own Open. There are worse ways for a Championship to begin.
At 7.08am, Joe Dean goes out with Henrik Stenson and Max Homa, having won Monday’s inaugural Last-Chance Qualifier to claim the final place in the field.
Scottie Scheffler begins his defence at 9.58am alongside Bryson DeChambeau and Tyrrell Hatton, and goes out at 3.04pm on Friday.
Tommy Fleetwood is out at 10.09am with Jon Rahm and Jordan Spieth, the last man to win an Open here. The local boy, the Spaniard and the 2017 champion, walking these fairways together in front of a home crowd. If you watch one group all day, watch that one. They return at 3.15pm on Friday.
Rory McIlroy has drawn a late one, out at 3.15pm with Xander Schauffele and Matt Fitzpatrick, before a 10.09am start on Friday.
The players to watch
Scottie Scheffler arrives as the defending Champion Golfer of the Year, and he arrives having made the 2025 Open look straightforward, which very few players have ever managed. Four rounds in the 60s at Royal Portrush for a total of 267, four clear of Harris English, his first Claret Jug and his fourth major. No one has successfully defended The Open since Pádraig Harrington in 2008 and 2009. Harrington, as it happens, won the first of those two here.
The story of the week, though, belongs to Tommy Fleetwood. He was born in Southport, grew up a few miles from these dunes and has admitted to sneaking on to the links once or twice as a boy, when Birkdale was hallowed turf for anyone from the town. He played here in the 2017 Open and finished tied 27th after opening with a 76. He arrives this year as the reigning FedEx Cup champion, having finally taken his first PGA Tour title at the Tour Championship, and there is now a fifty-metre mural of him on the wall of Southport & Birkdale Sports Club.
No Englishman has won The Open since Sir Nick Faldo in 1992, and Fleetwood is not the only one carrying that weight this week. Matt Fitzpatrick, Tyrrell Hatton and Justin Rose are all in the field, as is Aaron Rai, who arrives as the reigning PGA Champion after his win in May. Rory McIlroy, back-to-back Masters champion, will as ever have half the grandstands with him.
Who actually wins is not something we are going to pretend to know. Birkdale asks for control rather than power, and it now asks four completely different questions on its par 3s. The player who manages the golf course rather than fights it will still be there on Sunday evening.
One footnote. Justin Rose is in the field this week, and the last time The Open came to Royal Birkdale before Spieth, in 1998, a seventeen-year-old Rose finished tied fourth as an amateur and holed a pitch on the 72nd hole to do it. He turned professional the following day. Twenty-eight years on, he is still going, and he is back where it started.
The prize money
The R&A had not confirmed the 2026 prize fund at the time of writing and traditionally announces it during Championship week. The 2025 Open at Royal Portrush carried a total purse of $17 million, which is the most recent confirmed figure and a reasonable guide until the new one lands. The positional payouts last year ran as follows.
- 1st: $3,100,000
- 2nd: $1,759,000
- 3rd: $1,128,000
- 4th: $876,000
- 5th: $705,000
- 6th: $611,000
- 7th: $525,000
- 8th: $442,500
- 9th: $388,000
- 10th: $350,600
The Open pays less than the other three majors, and the R&A makes no secret of why. The money that does not go into the purse goes into governance and into developing the game in the countries where it needs developing. Whether that is the right balance is an argument for another day, but it is at least an honest one.
What to wear as a spectator
There is no formal dress code for general admission at The Open, and this year the weather has made the decision for you. The forecast is settled: 28 degrees on Wednesday, 25 on Thursday, easing to around 20 by the weekend, with sunshine most of the way and mornings starting cool at 13 to 16 degrees. The waterproofs can stay in the cupboard. That is not a sentence one often gets to write about an Open.
What that leaves is a different problem. Links courses have no shade. None. The dunes at Royal Birkdale give you a windbreak and nothing else, and spectators walk a good deal further than they expect over uneven ground, for eight or nine hours, in full sun. Anyone planning to be there for Matthew Baldwin's opening shot at 6.35am will start the day in a chill and finish it in the heat.
So: breathable, and not much of it. A performance pique polo is the whole day. The knit lets air through, it holds its shape when the temperature climbs, and it looks the part in a hospitality tent as readily as on the dunes.
The one extra thing worth carrying is a light layer for either end of the day, the early tee times and the long evening once the sun drops behind the clubhouse. A performance slipover adds warmth across the chest without a sleeve to trap heat, and a quarter zip midlayer will do the job on the cooler weekend evenings. Either packs down to nothing in a bag.
Beyond that, the unglamorous essentials matter more than usual this week. A cap or visor and sun cream, reapplied, because a bright July day on a links will find any patch of skin you forget about. Water, and more of it than you think. Comfortable footwear, because this is not a day for shoes you would not happily walk five miles in. Hospitality suites expect smart casual, meaning a collared shirt and tailored trousers rather than jeans and trainers, though the sun does not care where you are sitting.
And do allow time for the Official Shop. It sits in the main spectator village, and it carries the full Open Championship collection, the knitwear, polo shirts and outerwear that carry the Claret Jug. It is the one souvenir from the week that still earns its place in a wardrobe in ten years' time.
Our full guide to layering for golf covers how the layers work together across a season, and our dress code guide for The Open covers the day itself.
Glenmuir and The Open
Glenmuir is Official Licensee of The Open, appointed through the R&A’s retail and licensing partner, Fanatics, under a five-year agreement that began in 2026.
The collection is deliberately restrained. Rather than covering everything in branding, the Claret Jug appears as considered detailing, embroidered or woven, on pieces drawn from the core range: knitwear, polo shirts and outerwear designed in Scotland and embroidered in Lanark by the same team that handles club crests for golf clubs across the country. These are garments meant to be worn on a golf course for years, not merchandise meant to last a season.
The range spans men’s and women’s pieces alongside accessories. You can read more about how the partnership came about in our note on the five-year agreement.
Come Sunday evening
A new Champion Golfer of the Year will be named at Royal Birkdale on Sunday 19 July, on a course that four of the last five Open champions would not entirely recognise. The dunes are the same, the wind off the Irish Sea is the same, and the test is what it has always been: manage the weather, manage the ground, and keep the ball in front of you.
We will be watching from Lanark, as we have since 1891.
