The PGA Championship.

Who runs it

The PGA of America, an organisation of club professionals and teachers based in Frisco, Texas, runs the PGA Championship, according to The Golf News Net. It is a separate body from the PGA Tour, which touring professionals formed after splitting away from the PGA of America; the PGA Tour page covers that story.

How it began

History.com says golf professionals and leading amateurs met for lunch in New York on 17 January 1916 at the invitation of Rodman Wanamaker to talk about a national professional body, and that the PGA of America was formally set up on 10 April 1916 with 35 charter members. The first PGA Championship followed in October 1916 at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, New York, where Jim Barnes beat Jock Hutchison in the final match.

PGA Tour's 2026 preview notes that the championship was modelled on the News of the World match-play tournament in Britain. The winner receives the Wanamaker Trophy (in full, the Rodman Wanamaker Trophy), first presented in 1916.

The field

Search summaries of field reports describe a 156-player field. Twenty places go to club professionals, the top 20 at the PGA Professional Championship. The rest come through exemption categories such as past champions, recent major winners and the world ranking. We could not confirm the 2026 specifics, including the cut rule, from an official page.

Winning brings lasting rewards. The official report on the 2026 championship lists a lifetime exemption into the PGA Championship and five-year exemptions into the Masters, the U.S. Open, The Open and the Players Championship.

Champions, 2023 to 2026

The 2026 PGA Championship

The 108th PGA Championship was played from 14 to 17 May 2026 at Aronimink Golf Club, a Donald Ross design that Gil Hanse restored between 2016 and 2018, set up as a par 70.

It was a crowded finish. PGA Tour reported that 22 players started the final round within four shots of the lead, a championship record. Rai, from England, closed with a 65 that included an eagle on the par-5 ninth and a birdie putt of nearly 70 feet on the 17th, and won by three.

The official report lists several firsts. Rai was the first English-born winner since Jim Barnes in 1919, the first winner from outside the United States since Jason Day in 2015, and the first European winner since Rory McIlroy in 2014. Americans had won the ten editions before. With McIlroy's Masters a month earlier, Europeans won the first two majors of a season for the first time since the current set of four majors took shape.

What comes next

The 2027 PGA Championship goes to Fields Ranch East at PGA Frisco in Frisco, Texas, according to the official 2026 report.

For coverage details, see watching golf. For the other three majors, see the majors overview.