2027 Korn Ferry Tour Schedule: 40 PGA Tour Cards, Full Dates
The PGA Tour released the 2027 Korn Ferry Tour schedule on Wednesday, a 25-event season that opens January 17 in the Bahamas, ends October 10 at The Federal Club in Glen Allen, Virginia, and puts 40 PGA Tour cards on the line instead of the 20 handed out this month.
The doubling is the headline, but the fine print matters more. Only the top 10 on the final points list will play the PGA Tour Championship Series in 2028. The next 30 get membership of the new Challenger Series, the second tier the Tour is building beneath its elite circuit. Korn Ferry Tour president Alex Baldwin called 2027 "the most competitive season in our Tour's history" in the official release, and for once the marketing line and the arithmetic agree.
Forty Cards, Two Very Different Prizes
Under the model that just finished, the top 20 on the Korn Ferry Tour points list earned full PGA Tour membership. The 2027 class of 20 collected their cards at The Federal Club on October 11, led by points winner Ross Steelman and including 19-year-old Blades Brown, the youngest graduate in the tour's history. Those players will spend 2027 on a PGA Tour that still runs as one series.
From 2028 that single ladder splits in two. The top 10 Korn Ferry finishers in 2027 go straight into the Championship Series, the 23 or 24-event top tier with 120-player fields and $20 million purses that the PGA Tour laid out in detail in June. Finishers 11 through 40 become Challenger Series members, playing a 20-event second tier with 144-player fields and purses of at least $4 million, from which at least 20 players are promoted each year.
Forty cards does not mean 40 places at the top table: it means 10 seats in the Championship Series and 30 in the league below it. As Athlon Sports put it, finishing 11th in 2027 earns a PGA Tour card and still leaves a player one spot short of the elite series. The gap between 10th and 11th on the final points list will be
The Full 2027 Korn Ferry Tour Schedule
The season covers seven countries and 15 U.S. states. Regular-season purses stay at $1 million and the four Korn Ferry Tour Finals events carry $1.5 million each, which puts $27 million of prize money on the schedule across 25 stops. Competition dates below are the Thursday to Sunday (or Sunday to Wednesday for the two Bahamas events) rounds, taken from the PGA Tour's release, as of October 23, 2026.
| Dates | Event | Venue | Purse |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan. 17 to 20 | The Bahamas Golf Classic at Atlantis Paradise Island | Atlantis Ocean Club Golf Course, Paradise Island, Bahamas | $1 million |
| Jan. 24 to 27 | The Bahamas Great Abaco Classic at The Abaco Club | The Abaco Club on Winding Bay, Great Abaco, Bahamas | $1 million |
| Feb. 11 to 14 | Visa Open | Country Club de Bogota (Fundadores Course), Bogota, Colombia | $1 million |
| Feb. 18 to 21 | The Panama Championship | Club de Golf de Panama, Panama City, Panama | $1 million |
| Feb. 25 to 28 | 120 Visa Argentina Open presented by Macro | Olivos Golf Club, Buenos Aires, Argentina | $1 million |
| March 4 to 7 | 97 Scotiabank Abierto de Chile | Prince of Wales Country Club, Santiago, Chile | $1 million |
| April 1 to 4 | LECOM Suncoast Classic | Lakewood National Golf Club (Commander Course), Lakewood Ranch, Florida | $1 million |
| April 15 to 18 | Tulum Championship at PGA Riviera Maya | PGA Riviera Maya, Tulum, Mexico | $1 million |
| April 22 to 25 | Club Car Championship at The Landings Golf & Athletic Club | The Landings Golf & Athletic Club (Deer Creek Course), Savannah, Georgia | $1 million |
| May 13 to 16 | BMW Charity Pro-Am presented by TD SYNNEX | Thornblade Club and The Country Club of Spartanburg, Greer, South Carolina | $1 million |
| May 20 to 23 | Colonial Life Charity Classic | The Woodcreek Club, Columbia, South Carolina | $1 million |
| June 3 to 6 | UNC Health Championship | Raleigh Country Club, Raleigh, North Carolina | $1 million |
| June 10 to 13 | Visit Knoxville Open | Holston Hills Country Club, Knoxville, Tennessee | $1 million |
| June 17 to 20 | Memorial Health Championship presented by LRS | Panther Creek Country Club, Springfield, Illinois | $1 million |
| June 24 to 27 | OccuNet Classic presented by Amarillo National Bank | Tascosa Golf Club (La Paloma Course), Amarillo, Texas | $1 million |
| July 15 to 18 | The Blue Championship | TPC Colorado, Berthoud, Colorado | $1 million |
| July 22 to 25 | Evans Scholars Invitational | Stonebridge Country Club, Aurora, Illinois | $1 million |
| July 29 to Aug. 1 | Utah Championship presented by Intermountain Health | Ogden Golf & Country Club, Ogden, Utah | $1 million |
| Aug. 5 to 8 | Pinnacle Bank Championship | The Club at Indian Creek, Omaha, Nebraska | $1 million |
| Aug. 12 to 15 | Albertsons Boise Open presented by Chevron | Hillcrest Country Club, Boise, Idaho | $1 million |
| Aug. 19 to 22 | AdventHealth Championship | Blue Hills Country Club, Kansas City, Missouri | $1 million |
| Sept. 9 to 12 | Simmons Bank Open for the Snedeker Foundation | Vanderbilt Legends Club (North Course), Franklin, Tennessee | $1.5 million |
| Sept. 23 to 26 | Nationwide Children's Hospital Championship | The Ohio State University Golf Club (Scarlet Course), Columbus, Ohio | $1.5 million |
| Sept. 30 to Oct. 3 | Compliance Solutions Championship | The Patriot Golf Club, Owasso, Oklahoma | $1.5 million |
| Oct. 7 to 10 | Korn Ferry Tour Championship presented by Virginia's Richmond Region | The Federal Club, Glen Allen, Virginia | $1.5 million |
Ten events will be televised on Golf Channel, including both Bahamas tournaments in January, the regular-season finale at the AdventHealth Championship, and all four Finals events. Field sizes shrink through the Finals: the top 156 on the points list start the Simmons Bank Open, 132 make the Nationwide Children's Hospital Championship, 100 reach the Compliance Solutions Championship, and only the top 60 play the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, where the 10-card and 40-card cutoffs are settled.
What Changed From 2026
Golf Channel's Brentley Romine noted that the calendar is largely unchanged from 2026, with 25 events again, so the differences sit at the edges. The one new tournament is the 97th Scotiabank Abierto de Chile, March 4 to 7 at Prince of Wales Country Club in Santiago. The national open dates to 1927 and counts Gary Player and Roberto De Vicenzo among its past champions; Prince of Wales has hosted a Korn Ferry Tour stop for the last four seasons, so the venue is familiar even if the name on the trophy is not.
Visa becomes the title sponsor of the Visa Open in Bogota, Colombia, the first of five Latin American events that run from February into April. The 120th Visa Argentina Open presented by Macro returns to Olivos Golf Club in Buenos Aires for the 13th time and the first since 2024. In July the Evans Scholars Invitational moves to Stonebridge Country Club in Aurora, Illinois, a course that hosted the Ameritech Senior Open from 1991 to 1995 and the LPGA's Kellogg-Keebler Classic from 2002 to 2004.
The college pipeline is unchanged. Seniors who finish second through tenth in the final 2027 PGA Tour University Ranking join the Korn Ferry Tour in June for the rest of the season, starting at the Visit Knoxville Open on June 10. Four PGA Tour Americas graduates, Thomas Ponder, Corey Pereira, Etienne Papineau and Patrick Flavin, already hold 2027 Korn Ferry Tour membership through their play on that circuit, according to a Roundtable Sports report carried by Yahoo Sports.
How The Korn Ferry Tour Got Here
The new card split is a consequence of the PGA Tour's two-series restructure, announced in June and due to start in 2028. The Tour confirmed then that the top 90 on the Championship Series points list keep their status, that relegated players get a late-season "last chance" run of four to six events to climb back, and that a Challenger Series player who wins twice in a season is promoted on the spot. The 2028 schedule shake-up was already reshaping developmental golf before this week's announcement, and the Travelers Championship was the first confirmed Championship Series event back in the summer.
What the June announcement left open was exactly how the Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Americas and Q-School would feed the two tiers. Wednesday's release answers the Korn Ferry part. The 2027 PGA Tour season, the last under the old format, has its own full calendar here, with the FedExCup Fall and the 2028 eligibility details for both series still to be published.
The Korn Ferry Tour's 2026 graduates give a sense of what the new numbers mean in practice. Steelman finished first with six top-five finishes and two wins, Austin Hitt won the Tour Championship from 22nd on the points list to climb to sixth, and Blades Brown broke Jason Day's 2007 record as the youngest graduate at 19 years, 4 months and 20 days. Under the 2027 rules, all three would be Championship Series players. Davis Lamb, who took the 20th and final card, would be a Challenger Series member instead.
Players Are Split On The New Deal
Reaction on tour has been mixed, which is about what you would expect when a system hands more players a card but makes the best card harder to reach. James Nicholas, who finished 30th on the 2026 points list, called the new structure "a great opportunity," per Golf Channel. Matt Atkins, 68th in points, took the opposite view and wrote that "The Korn Ferry is the PGA Tour overflow, not a developmental tour," in a post quoted in the same Golf Channel report.
Atkins's point is that a 2027 Korn Ferry player outside the top 40 gets nothing automatic in 2028, when the Tour's own Challenger Series will be full of players relegated from the top tier. There are still side doors. Golf Channel reported that the top 10 at the final stage of 2027 PGA Tour Q-School will receive Challenger Series cards, and that a top-75 finish on the Korn Ferry Tour points list is one of the exemptions into that final stage.
The timing is not lost on anyone. The same week the PGA Tour published a schedule promising 40 cards, LIV Golf is counting commitments ahead of a Sunday deadline that will decide whether it has a 2027 season at all. Developmental golf has rarely offered a clearer choice between a crowded ladder and an uncertain one.
What It Means For Players And Fans
For players, the maths changes every decision in the Finals. Under the old system a 20th-place finish and a 10th-place finish bought the same card. From 2028 the top 10 join a series whose regular events carry $20 million purses alongside the majors and THE PLAYERS, while 11th through 40th play for $4 million minimums with a promotion race on top. The incentive shifts from protecting a position to chasing wins, because a win moves a player on both cutoffs at once.
For fans, the Korn Ferry Tour becomes a more interesting watch than it has been in years. The Finals will be televised in full, the points list will carry two live cutlines instead of one, and the gap between the top 10 and the rest will be the storyline from the Simmons Bank Open on September 9 through the final putt in Glen Allen on October 10. If you want to see it in person, the regular-season stops in Knoxville, Boise, Omaha and Kansas City are on the calendar above, and a spectator dress and packing guide covers what to bring.
None of the promotion arithmetic changes much for the golfer who tees it up on Saturday morning. The players chasing 40 cards next year know their numbers to the yard, and that is the one habit worth borrowing. If you are not sure how far each club in your bag carries, a gapping session takes about an hour and will do more for your scores than any schedule announcement.
