Rory McIlroy has enjoyed a wonderful 2025 PGA Tour season, and it’s only due to Scottie Scheffler’s brilliance that he won’t run away with the Player of the Year award.
McIlroy has won three times on the PGA Tour this season, including The Players Championship and his dramatic triumph at The Masters where he completed the Grand Slam.
However, despite all of that success, the Northern Irishman has been involved in his fair share of controversy in 2025.
McIlroy skipped the PGA Tour’s first FedEx Cup Playoff event at the St. Jude Championship two weeks ago.
And as a result, it was suggested that the PGA Tour were not happy with McIlroy’s decision.
However, as the 36-year-old has persistently repeated, PGA Tour players are independent contractors, and they are free to play as and when they want to.
So with a new schedule set for the 2026 season, will McIlroy skip any of the Signature Events, with nine now on the calendar starting from next year?
Rory McIlroy’s instant reaction to the new PGA Tour schedule for 2026
The Miami Championship at Trump National Doral has been added to the 2026 PGA Tour schedule and will be played at the end of April, rolling into early May.
That means that there will now be three Signature Events and two major championships in a six-week period from mid-April to mid-May.
McIlroy addressed the media on Tuesday ahead of the Tour Championship this week, and he was asked to give his opinion on the new PGA Tour schedule for the 2026 season.
He said: “I mean, geez, I think it’s all positive when you have — golf builds through the January, February, March months, and obviously golf gets a huge popularity spike or whatever through Augusta; and then to try to keep that momentum going, keep that momentum going through the next few weeks, through the PGA, U.S. Open, I think it’s a good thing.
“It’s quite a bit of a workload for the players to play that much golf in that stretch, but I think it’s not as if we’re having to travel halfway around the world to do it. These are all pretty easy stops on the East Coast for the most part.
“But I think it’ll be good. It’ll be a good schedule, and I think if the TOUR and the top players get off to a good start, I think that builds momentum for the TOUR, and I think the TOUR can just sort of ride that momentum through that stretch.“
Rory McIlroy says if he will skip any Signature Events in 2026
The main point of the Signature Events initially was to ensure that the best players on the PGA Tour gathered together to compete against each other more often.
However, McIlroy missed three Signature events in the 2025 season – The Sentry, The RBC Heritage and The Memorial.
Meanwhile, world number one Scottie Scheffler missed two – The Sentry (through injury) and the Truist Championship.
McIlroy was asked if he plans to skip any of the elevated events next year as well.
The Northern Irishman said: “Yeah, look, I’ll always look at the schedule at the start of the year and see what best fits me and my life and everything else that I sort of do, whether it’s with family or other opportunities that I’m pursuing outside of golf. I’ll always look at that.
“I’ll always choose the schedule that best fits me, and this year that meant skipping a few Signature Events. I might skip less next year. I might skip the same amount, I don’t know. It’s all just — the luxury of being a PGA TOUR player is we are free to pick and choose our schedule for the most part, and I took advantage of that this year and I’ll continue to take advantage of that for as long as I can.“
It’s clear to see from those comments that McIlroy will skip certain events on the PGA Tour next year if they do not fit in with the schedule that he wants to play.
So that is something that the PGA Tour need to look at. Whether that means changing the schedule entirely remains to be seen.
Receive exclusive golf news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
