The 2026 Presidents Cup

The Headline Numbers

Four numbers that frame the 2026 match at Medinah:

What the Presidents Cup Is, and Why It Exists

The Presidents Cup is a team match-play competition between the United States and an International Team. It is run by the PGA Tour and was first played in 1994. The two teams meet every two years, and the 2026 match at Medinah is the 16th in the series.

The event exists to fill a gap. The Ryder Cup, golf's oldest and most intense team event, is only ever the United States against Europe. That left some of the finest players in the world, from Australia, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Canada and South America, with no equivalent stage. The Presidents Cup gave them one. The International Team is defined simply: the best players who are eligible for neither the United States team nor Europe's Ryder Cup side.

Pride, not prize money

There is no prize fund. Players are not paid to appear. Instead, each player and captain directs a share of the money the event raises to charities of their choosing, a tradition the Presidents Cup has kept since it began. What is on the line is national and continental pride, a place in the record books, and the team-room experience that players consistently rank among the highlights of a career.

Medinah Country Club: The 2026 Venue

The 2026 Presidents Cup is staged at Medinah Country Club, on its famous Course No. 3, in Medinah, Illinois, roughly 25 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. Few American clubs carry a heavier championship history.

Medinah's Course No. 3 has tested the best for nearly a century. It crowned three US Open champions and gave Tiger Woods two of his PGA Championship titles, in 1999 and 2006. The course is long, tree-lined and demanding off the tee, the kind of parkland test that rewards control and punishes a loose drive.

The Miracle at Medinah

Medinah's place in team golf was sealed in 2012, when it hosted the Ryder Cup. The United States led 10-6 going into the Sunday singles and seemed certain to win. Europe then produced the comeback that became known as the Miracle at Medinah, taking eight and a half of the twelve singles points to win 14.5 to 13.5. Bringing the Presidents Cup to the same ground is a deliberate echo: Medinah is a course that knows how to deliver a Sunday.

The Format: 30 Matches Over Four Days

The Presidents Cup is decided entirely by match play, where holes are won and lost rather than strokes counted. There are 30 matches in all, each worth a single point, played across four days:

Thirty matches mean 30 points. The first team to reach 15.5 points wins the Presidents Cup. If the four days finish level at 15-15, the two teams share it. Because the United States holds the cup from 2024, the International Team needs an outright win to take it back.

Presidents Cup vs Ryder Cup: What Is Different

The two events look alike, and they are often confused. They share the team-match-play idea, the foursomes and four-balls and Sunday singles, and the absence of prize money. The differences are real, though, and they matter:

The honest summary is that the Presidents Cup matters less than the Ryder Cup, mostly because it has lacked the Ryder Cup's competitive tension. It also matters more than people give it credit for. It is still the only team event on this stage for the game's leading players from Australia, Asia, South Africa and the Americas, and it is the proving ground where partnerships and captaincy ideas are tested. For a full preview of its older, fiercer cousin, see our Ryder Cup 2027 at Adare Manor guide.

The Two Teams: United States and International

Each side is 12 players: six who qualify automatically and six wildcard selections made by the captain. The United States places the six players with the most FedEx Cup points across the qualifying window, which runs through the BMW Championship in August 2026. The International Team takes its top six from a points list based on the Official World Golf Ranking at the end of August 2026. The captains then complete each squad. The full rosters will not be confirmed until September, so the names below are the players who anchor the picture going into qualifying.

Why the United States Keeps Winning

The Presidents Cup has one defining feature: the United States almost always wins it. The Americans lead the all-time series 13-1-1 and have won the last ten editions without a break. The International Team has won the Presidents Cup exactly once, in 1998 at Royal Melbourne, where Peter Thomson's side ran out resounding 20.5 to 11.5 winners. The 2003 match in South Africa was tied and the cup shared. Every other staging has gone to the United States.

The reasons are not a mystery. The United States simply has more elite players to choose from, and its qualifying pool runs deeper year after year. The International Team also carries a structural handicap: its players come from different countries, different tours and different time zones, with fewer natural pairings and less shared history than a settled American roster. The closest results, 2015 and 2019, both came when the International side built genuine partnerships and took the match deep into Sunday. Medinah 2026 is the next chance to turn that occasional spark into a second win.

Medinah, McIlroy and the Road to the 2027 Ryder Cup

Rory McIlroy will not tee it up in the 2026 Presidents Cup. He cannot: the International Team is for players from outside the United States and Europe, and McIlroy, from Holywood in Northern Ireland, is a Team Europe player. His team golf belongs to the Ryder Cup.

Medinah, though, is woven into his story. At the 2012 Ryder Cup on this very course, McIlroy misread the time zone on the final morning, believed his Sunday singles match started an hour later than it did, and reached the first tee with only minutes to spare after a lift from a local police officer. He then went out and beat Keegan Bradley. It is one of the most retold tales in modern Ryder Cup history, and it happened on the ground that hosts the 2026 Presidents Cup.

How 2026 sets up 2027

The Presidents Cup is played in even years and the Ryder Cup in odd years, so the leading players have a team event every September. For the United States, Medinah 2026 is a live tune-up: a chance to test pairings and captaincy a year before the 2027 Ryder Cup. That Ryder Cup lands at Adare Manor in Ireland, on home soil for McIlroy, and our Ryder Cup 2027 preview covers what it means for him. The Presidents Cup, the Ryder Cup and the season-long race in our FedEx Cup explainer together make up the modern team-and-trophy calendar.

How to Watch the 2026 Presidents Cup

The 2026 Presidents Cup runs from Thursday 24 September to Sunday 27 September. In the United States, the Golf Channel and NBC carry the coverage across the four days. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Sky Sports Golf carries the event. Elsewhere, coverage runs through the PGA Tour's regional broadcast partners.

For a fuller breakdown of where to watch every stage of the golf calendar, see our 2026 golf viewing guide, and our weekly golf-news digest tracks the qualifying races for both teams all the way to Medinah.

Frequently Asked Questions