The Complete LIV Golf Offseason Rollercoaster

The 2026 LIV Golf season begins tomorrow in Riyadh where the 13 teams will tee off under the lights and Cleeks GC member Adrian Meronk will look to defend his title. Though just one year ago when the 2025 season started, things looked a little bit different within the league.

Let’s go over what’s happened, how we got here, and where things might be headed.

Obviously, one of the most noteworthy stories throughout the history of LIV Golf is who’s playing. This year we’ve seen a number of players exit the league, in various ways, and even more players joining.

First and foremost the league expands this year from 54 to 57 players. These spots come from an expansion of the “Wild Card” spots, or players that aren’t directly assigned to a team and play individually. Previously there were just two, now there are five. Disappointingly, they won’t be forming a “Wild Card Team” as myself and many others had hoped, but the added pathways into the league are a net positive nonetheless.

These five players are made up of two from the International Series Rankings, and three from the Promotions Event, an annual league qualifier that was held just a few weeks ago in Florida. From the International Series come Scott Vincent and Yosuke Asaji. Scott is a name you’ll recognize from the LIV Golf ecosystem as he was a member of Iron Heads GC for a couple of seasons. He returns this year as a wild card after winning the International Series Order of Merit. Yosuke Asaji finished second in the International Series Order of Merit after a fantastic run of play late in the season that saw finish T2 in the International Series Phillipines Event and just two weeks later win the Singapore Open.

The final three spots from the promotions event were filled by the original wild card Anthony Kim, Bjorn Hellgren, and Canadian fan-favorite Richard T. Lee.

The turnover of the Wild Card spots weren’t the only player movement this offseason as the league bids farewell to Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Kevin Na, and Jinichiro Kozuma. Add these guys to the list of players relegated out of the league after last season (Henrik Stenson, Andy Ogletree, Mito Pereira, Yubin Jang, Anthony Kim, and Frederik Kjettrup) and there were a good number of spots needing to be filled.

Phew. If that seems like a lot, that’s because it was.

The elephants in the room here are the departures of Reed and Koepka. These departures can be backfilled with competitive players who have all of the talent in the world, but those names are tough to replace. Koepka arguably easier than Reed. Though Reed doesn’t quite have the resume of Brooks, he brought a certain fire to LIV events and he’ll be missed both as a member of 4 Aces and the league as a whole.

In addition to the long list of roster changes, ahead of the 2026 season several teams underwent full rebrands. It seems these rebrands are geared at recreating what several of the other teams have already accomplished. A few years back when Punch GC rebranded to Ripper GC and debuted an Australian themed logo, it was a no-brainer that other teams would follow suit. The way the Australian golf fans have rallied behind Cam Smith, his crew and the Ripper GC brand, everyone knew they’d discovered the formula for success.

That’s exactly what’s happened this offseason. Check out the full breakdown of all of the rebrands on LIV Golf to date here:

One of the more interesting stores throughout the LIV Golf season is the individual rankings. Prior to the 2026 season, the top 24 players at the end of the year would land in the “Lock Zone” and would be guaranteed a spot on LIV Golf for the following year. Additionally, every player that finished 48th and below would be in the “Drop Zone” and would be relegated out of LIV Golf, meaning they could not play the following season. Everybody between those two were in the “Open Zone” which meant that they were able to be signed by their current team, another team, or dropped if their team had other ideas in mind.

Those zones have been restructured as follows:

This change is a true “kill two birds with one stone” situation. There was some unhappiness from the player base that they could potentially be dropped despite having a relatively strong season. Finishing in the top 24 was no easy task with some of the talent this league has at the top end and players could have easily been one of the leading performers on their team and found themselves dropped at the end of the season because they finished in the Open Zone. The expansion of the Lock Zone will provide guarantees to roughly 60% of the league.

On the other end of things, the increased Drop Zone addresses a concern from the OWGR board with the league not having enough turnover. Now 20% of the field will be subject to relegation out of LIV Golf. This should tick the box and ideally will be part of a continued effort to earn world ranking points, though on the flip side it may also make LIV Golf one of the most difficult tours to maintain your status on. This won’t be an issue if they continue to work towards an integration into the professional golf ecosystem, which seems to be the case. Players will be less incentivized to join LIV Golf if they know that they are giving up any other options with fines and suspensions from other tours. With recent reports from the DP World Tour that existing members will be granted releases, and therefore will not be fined for playing LIV Golf events, this may not be as big of an issue as it might seem. Potential members may have the option of playing on the DP World Tour, if being relegated out of LIV Golf was a concern of theirs.

Yes, that’s correct! Early in the offseason, before any major moves had been announced, it was reported that LIV Golf would be moving from 54 holes to the more traditional 72 hole format. This was met with mixed reviews from LIV Golf’s most dedicated fans. Many saw it as an abandonment of their identity and them becoming “just another golf tour”. The argument for the change stems from the ongoing battle for LIV Golf to be awarded Official World Golf Ranking points. If they remained at 54 holes it’s likely that there would have been a significant reduction in the points that got awarded.

It’s believed that this move was part of continuing conversations that CEO Scott O’Neil was having with OWGR Chairman Trevor Immelmann. Should that all come to fruition, the move will serve as a part of a long term strengthening of the league as not receiving world ranking points, and the lack of access to the major championships that come with that is one of the major downsides for players that may otherwise be interested in joining the league.

It’s very important to note that at the time of this article, one day before the start of the 2026 season, they have not been awarded points and there have been multiple players on the league, including Bryson DeChambeau that are skeptical or even openly displeased with the change to 72 holes.

These changes have probably gone a bit under the radar but will be important to the structure of the league going forward, especially with the changing of the Lock and Drop Zones.

Without getting into the nitty-gritty of it, LIV Golf has adjusted the points allocations for individual finishes to reward high finishes, and especially wins, more. This will make it so, let’s just say for example, a player couldn’t win the season long individual points race without ever winning an event, or something crazy like that.

They’re also doubling the prize pool for the team leaderboard and paying out a portion of that prize pool to every team, instead of just the top three finishers. Finally, Majesticks GC are going to rake in some of that team money (sorry guys).

The fight for world rankings points has been all over the place since the start of LIV Golf in 2022.

Originally, based on an honest and good-faith belief that the system would adapt to a large contingent of players forming a new league, many players were promised world ranking points by Greg Norman. That never came to fruition and they’d eventually abandon their pursuit of approval from the board in hopes that the major championships would acknowledge the inaccuracy of their entry criteria and form exemption categories specific to LIV Golf. That only kind of came to fruition when the Open Championship and US Open added criteria that would allow one player to earn an exemption through the LIV Golf individual rankings provided they met multiple criteria (in top 5, no one ahead of them not already exempt). Though by no means an equitable exemption, it was something. Other major championships, namely The Masters, solved this issue by sending out special invitations to players they felt should be in the field but weren’t exempt by other means, like Joaquin Niemann.

Scott O’Neil would take over from Greg Norman and shortly after apply for World Ranking Points and restart dialogue with the board and new chairman Trevor Immelmann. Some of the initial pushback from the board in the prior application was surrounding turnover and pathways into the league. The pathways have been increased with the wild card spots going from 2>5, and the turnover has been increased with more players being relegated this season.

The rosters for the 2026 season had been finalized and almost immediately after there were reports just last week that the OWGR board would be meeting on Friday (Jan 30th) to vote on the LIV Golf application. Shortly after these reports, Patrick Reed announced that he’d be leaving the league and playing this season on the DP World Tour. Not Long after that announcement reports surfaced that the OWGR board had delayed their meeting and would be meeting the following (this) week. Included in these reports were suggestions that this delay may be because the board didn’t want to “take any focus away from Reed in Bahrain”. This, clearly, was a delay intended to avoid incentivizing potential recruits while they still had a spot to fill.

Today the OWGR announced that they would be awarding LIV Golf world ranking points with a few caveats. They would only be awarded to players that finished inside the top 10 (including ties), and the points would be reduced due to a number of factors. Some of those include the still limited pathways into the field and recruitment based on nationality and not merit. The board described their efforts as an exhaustive and collaborative process, though the initial sentiment from within LIV Golf’s leadership is that they are happy to receive points, but the decision is not yet equitable. This decision is only reflective of what LIV will receive for the 2026 season and they will continually review as further changes are expected to the LIV Golf format for the 2027 season.

Not long after the announcement from OWGR, LIV Golf would release a statement that acknowledged the recognition from the OWGR board, but voiced their displeasure with the decision.

They continued:

The overall process and decision as a whole, though a net positive for LIV, continues to illustrate the uphill battle they will continue to have to establish themselves in the golf world. I for one hope that this decision and the way the process has gone as a whole serves a learning moment for the leadership within LIV, and they realize that despite friendly and optimistic conversations, once you are not in the room, the establishment will continue to work against you.

New players in, old players out. Stinger GC becomes Southern Guards GC, Iron Heads GC becomes Korean Golf Club, Majesticks GC becomes red. More players safe, more players relegated. 18 more holes. More money to teams and points to high finishers (shoutout Joaco). OWGR battle makes progress, but continues. If you only read the TL:DR, stop, what are you doing? You’re better than this. It’s not that long.