Officials hope to finalize the hospitality setup for the 2026 Presidents Cup sometime next summerpga tour
With the 2024 Presidents Cup in the books, PGA Tour officials are now turning their attention to the 2026 event at Medinah outside Chicago, which they’re planning on being the biggest ever for the tournament.
Joie Chitwood III, the executive director for 2026, was on-site at Royal Montreal last week. Logistically, the Chicago event will give the tour more options than this year, which was contested literally on an island, he said.
“From an operational perspective, I thought the team did a lot with a very challenging site,” Chitwood said of last week. “I feel like Chicago, in terms of how big it is and how big Medinah is, we’ve got maybe some easier transportation options versus being Montreal, being honest. You’ll hear me say this probably many times, but we’re setting the stage for what will be the largest Presidents Cup we’ve ever put on.”
Chitwood, who arrived in Chicago to begin planning for the tournament in summer of 2023, would not say how many fans are expected to be on property in two years’ time. At Charlotte’s Quail Hollow Club in 2022, an estimated 200,000 fans attended.
The tour will have a better idea for total attendance, Chitwood said, once the event’s hospitality setup is finalized. That’s estimated to be sometime next summer. The tour would probably release general admission tickets in the spring of 2026, Chitwood said.
As for hospitality, the tour has already released its major products, which include suites that can hold 75, 50 or 35 people, as well as its top offering, the 1924 Club. Of the products released, 42% are already sold, Chitwood said. Next year, the club will release table products, a mid-tier individual premium offering and a “Captain’s Club.”
“The footprint here is so massive,” Chitwood said. “It just gives us a lot more opportunities to think about how we manage it to our advantage.”
New for Medinah in 2026 will be a completely redesigned No. 3 course, led by longtime PGA Tour player Geoff Ogilvy and his OCM Partners.
“It wasn’t just scraping it and redoing bunkers and a green,” Chitwood said. “No, there are six new holes that members had never seen before. They touched every blade of grass. We had a chance to pull in the competition department from a business perspective, the club and their architects, and really talk about, well, if you guys add this or just think about this, it’ll allow you to manage big events in the future a little bit better.”
The last time Medinah hosted a PGA Tour event was the 2019 BMW Championship. In 2026, it will become the first course to host a Presidents Cup, Ryder Cup, U.S. Open and PGA Championship.
The tour will seek to have three Global Partners for 2026, said Jared Rice, the tour’s SVP/sales & market development for Championship Management. 1Password and Rolex will be back on board for 2026. Cognizant, a global partner last week at Royal Montreal, is making the full transition now to only being the title sponsor of the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches. Rice said the tour hopes to have a third partner on board in the next 6-8 months.
“There have been many meetings with 20 plus people at the table,” Rice said. “And to have that creativity around fan amenities, hospitality, product design … we all had a chance to talk about priorities in real time.”
