The PGA Tour announced Wednesday that its annual opening event, the Sentry, will not be held in 2026 due to the ongoing drought on Maui, Hawaii, where Kapalua’s Plantation Course is located. Instead, the Sony Open at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu will be held from January 15th to 18th as the league’s first tournament of the 2026 season.
“Since it first emerged that the PGA Tour might not be able to play at Kapalua’s Plantation Course due to Maui’s ongoing drought, we have worked closely with our partners at Sentry to evaluate options for a 2026 appearance at Sentry,” PGA Tour Chief Competition Officer Tyler Dennis said in a statement. “While we are disappointed to have come to this decision, we are grateful for the cooperation and dedication of our wonderful partner, Sentry Insurance.”
The Tour announced in September that it would not hold the tournament at the Plantation Course and considered other options for hosting the tournament. These options included other venues in the Aloha State and elsewhere, but were ultimately determined not to be reasonable given the infrastructure and vendor support required to host the tournament.
The Sentry was the Tour’s season opener from 1986 to 2013 and has been the Tour’s season opener since 2024, when the circuit returned to a calendar year schedule.
Eligibility for The Sentry includes the top 50 players in the 2025 FedEx Cup standings and the previous season’s winner. Athletes who finished in the top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings qualified for all 2026 varsity events, but will play at Sentry, and the winners who only made the field with that win will be added to the field for another varsity event at RBC Heritage.
