The PGA Tour has begun to lay out the major overhaul it will roll out in 2028. If on Monday it confirmed the Travelers Championship —a fairly predictable continuity— as the first piece of the future Championship Series, this Tuesday brought a much more unexpected announcement: Sompo will be the title sponsor of another of no fewer than 15 tournaments that will make up the circuit’s new top division.
The alliance will debut a year earlier at a venue that seemed to have fallen off the calendar for good. The tournament sponsored by the Japanese company will be played from 29 July to 1 August 2027 at the North Course of Silverado Resort, in Napa, California. It will have a full field of 144 players, be contested over 72 holes and feature a cut to the top 65 and ties after the second round. The PGA Tour has not yet announced its official name or prize fund.
The choice of Silverado, at first glance, represents an extraordinary step up in status. The course hosted between 2014 and 2025 one of the more modest events of the US autumn. It changed sponsor and name several times: Frys.com Open, Safeway Open, Fortinet Championship and, in its last two editions, Procore Championship.
Scottie Scheffler won there in 2025 with a score of 19 under par and a one-shot advantage over Ben Griffin. It was an exceptionally strong edition due to the presence of ten members of the United States Ryder Cup team. However, Procore did not renew its deal and Napa disappeared entirely from the 2026 schedule.
The return will not, technically, be a simple revival of the former Procore. The date Silverado will receive in 2027 is the one currently occupied by the Rocket Classic, which this week is holding its final edition in Detroit after Rocket Companies decided to end its sponsorship. The tournament will thus change sponsor, name and venue.
Napa will only be a stop
Here the fine print appears that changes the meaning of the announcement. Silverado will bring the PGA Tour back in 2027, but Napa has not been chosen as the permanent home for a Championship Series event. When the new structure arrives in 2028, Sompo will retain the sponsorship and the tournament will move up to the top level, although it will be relocated to a new market that has not yet been revealed.
“We are looking forward to launching this partnership in Napa in 2027 and are excited to be able to announce in the coming months its future home in a new PGA Tour market”, explained Dhruv Prasad, the Tour’s commercial director.
Therefore, the resurrection of Napa will, at least for the moment, last only one year. In 2027 Silverado will go from hosting a former minor FedExCup Fall event to staging a regular-season tournament in the height of summer, but it will not benefit in 2028 from that event’s conversion into one of the major fixtures of the new calendar.
Sompo thus becomes the first new sponsor specifically secured for the Championship Series and the second commitment publicly announced by the PGA Tour. The first was the Travelers Championship, confirmed this Monday. Its continuation at TPC River Highlands was within all expectations after having been part of the group of tournaments Signature in recent seasons.
What the PGA Tour will look like from 2028
From 2028 the Championship Series will constitute the PGA Tour’s first division. Its calendar will run roughly from February to August and will comprise between 23 and 24 events. The core will be made up of fifteen regular tournaments, to which will be added THE PLAYERS Championship, the four Majors, a revamped set of playoffs and the Ryder Cup or the Presidents Cup, as relevant. In its first season it will also include the men’s competition at the Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Regular tournaments will have minimum prize funds of 20 million dollars, fields of around 120 players, four rounds and a cut to the top 65 and ties. There will be no alternate lists nor sponsor invitations and all events will share the same entry criteria.
A minimum of 90 players will retain their place each year in the Championship Series and at least 20 will be promoted from the Challenger Series, the second tier that will run in parallel. This will feature a minimum of twenty tournaments, fields of up to 144 players and prize funds of at least four million dollars. A golfer who wins twice in this second division will gain immediate promotion.
The current FedExCup Fall will also disappear as it is now known. In the autumn there will be a series of last-chance tournaments, made up of between four and six events, so that relegated players and the top players from the Challenger Series can fight for the final spots in the top tier. In addition, the PGA Tour intends to organise a limited number of elevated international events together with the DP World Tour.
The postseason will introduce match play and the Tour Championship will cease to be permanently linked to East Lake in order to rotate among prestigious courses, some of them making their debut on the circuit.
The PGA Tour said in June that it already had ten of the fifteen regular tournaments of the Championship Series on track. Travelers and the future Sompo-sponsored event are the first two to have been officially unveiled. The 2028 puzzle is beginning to come together.
