Orlando’s most recognizable golf tournament just secured a seat at the PGA Tour’s new top table. The Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill will join the league’s Championship Series when the sweeping format changes arrive in 2028.
The move gives Bay Hill a permanent place among the Tour’s highest-profile events, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The tournament will remain a signature event in 2027 before the PGA Tour replaces that model with the new Championship Series the following year.
The PGA Tour’s new structure will divide its main schedule into a Championship Series and a Challenger Series, with promotion and relegation connecting the two. The Tour says the upper tier is designed to bring the best players together more consistently while creating clearer stakes for fans, players and sponsors.
For Bay Hill, that means a regular place in a series expected to include roughly 23 to 24 events from February through August. Championship Series regular-season tournaments are planned as 72-hole events with a 36-hole cut, fields averaging 120 players, no alternate list and purses of at least $20 million, according to the PGA Tour’s June announcement.
Bay Hill Gets One More Year In The Current Format
The 2027 Arnold Palmer Invitational is scheduled for the week of March 15 through March 21 at Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge. The tournament’s official site says the event will continue as one of a limited number of signature events next year, with a 72-player field and an elevated purse.
The calendar shift will put Orlando’s tournament after THE PLAYERS Championship in the 2027 Florida swing, rather than in its traditional position before the Ponte Vedra Beach event. That gives Central Florida golf fans another spring week built around the Tour’s biggest names before Bay Hill steps into the new structure in 2028.
Akshay Bhatia’s Bay Hill Win Added Fresh Momentum
The announcement follows one of the tournament’s most dramatic finishes in years. Akshay Bhatia came from five shots behind at the turn in March, forced a sudden-death playoff with Daniel Berger and won on the first extra hole for his third PGA Tour title, as the Arnold Palmer Invitational reported.
That kind of finish is exactly the sort of television-ready drama the PGA Tour says it wants more often from its premium events. The new series will also include the four major championships, THE PLAYERS Championship, the postseason and international team competitions such as the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup when scheduled.
For Orlando, the practical takeaway is simple: Bay Hill is no longer merely hosting one of golf’s important annual stops. It is being positioned as one of the fixed anchors of the PGA Tour’s next era, keeping the sport’s biggest regular-season spotlight in Central Florida for years to come.
