With 2026 almost upon us, we shall enter another stretch of 12 months that the cynics didn’t think LIV Golf would still be around for.
The Saudi-funded league burst on the scene in 2022, presenting itself as an alternative golf experience for both fans and players. 54 holes (recently changed to 72), shotgun starts, and music blaring around the host venues were a departure from the norm, manifested by the PGA Tour in America and the DP World Tour in Europe.
To now, LIV can boast a roster featuring Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson, Cam Smith, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and Tyrrell Hatton. You can also watch the league on Fox Sports in America and ITV in the UK.
Each player has a contract, which is another feature that separates LIV. Once a mission left incomplete by golf icon Greg Norman, the Shark finally got a new league off the ground as its CEO.
Things have changed in that department, and in other departments of LIV as it continues to evolve. Below, I have attempted to summarise where LIV stands at the end of 2025, what it has achieved, the format of the league, and features that are yet to be determined and issues that need to be ironed out.
Who plays for what team?
There are 13 teams in LIV Golf. Here they are. Each captain will be the first name listed on each team. These will be updated as the transfer window develops:
4Aces GC: Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Thomas Pieters, Harold Varner III
Cleeks GC: Martin Kaymer, Richard Bland, Adrian Meronk, Victor Perez
Crushers GC: Bryson DeChambeau, Paul Casey, Charles Howell III, Anirban Lahiri
Fireballs GC: Sergio Garcia, Josele Ballester, David Puig
HyFlyers GC: Phil Mickelson, Andy Ogletree (Relegated), Brendan Steele, Cameron Tringale
Iron Heads GC: Kevin Na, Yubin Jang (Relegated), Jinichiro Kozuma, Danny Lee
Legion XIII: Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Tom McKibbin, Caleb Surratt
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Majesticks GC: Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, Sam Horsfield, Laurie Canter
RangeGoats GC: Bubba Watson, Ben Campbell, Peter Uihlein, Matthew Wolff
Ripper GC: Cameron Smith, Lucas Herbert, Matt Jones, Marc Leishman
Smash GC: Talor Gooch, Jason Kokrak, Graeme McDowell
Stinger GC: Louis Oosthuizen, Dean Burmester, Branden Grace, Charl Schwartzel
Torque GC: Joaquin Niemann, Sebastian Munoz, Carlos Ortiz, Abraham Ancer
Wildcards: Anthony Kim, Chieh-Po Lee
Reserve players: John Catlin, Minkyu Kim, Luis Masaveu, Wade Ormsby, Max Rottluff, Ollie Schneiderjans, Young-han Song
Who else could join LIV?
The original intrigue with LIV was who was going to become a rebel and join? It was fun, but this intrigue has died down somewhat as the roster has taken a more solid shape.
Recent links have been made with Si Woo Kim, a former Players Championship winner, as a potential recruit for the Ironheads. Sungjae Im has been mentioned in whispers, too, but we still await confirmation.
Six-time PGA Tour winner Tony Finau was once linked to LIV, but again, nothing came to fruition.
Who works for LIV, and where is Greg Norman?
Scott O’Neil became the LIV CEO and replaced Greg Norman as the face of the league in January 2025. Noman now works within LIV away from the limelight and was the driving force in its birth.
O’Neil had been CEO of Merin Entertainments and for Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment.
The format
There are 54 players in each LIV tournament, comprising 13 four-man teams and two wildcards. There are individual and team leaderboards. The individual with the lowest score across 72 holes wins the event, just as normal. Since the start, the events had been 54 holes, but this changed to 72 for 2026 onwards.
There is a season-long individual standing. The higher you finish each week, the more points you earn across the season. If you finish in the top 24 at the end, you stay with LIV. If you finish below 48th, you are relegated. Anything in between, you are a free agent and can either sign for another team or stay with your own team.
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In the team format, the lowest cumulative team score wins the team event. At each event, every score counts. If all four players in the team shoot level par, the cumulative score will be level par. If they all shoot 5-under, their score is 20-under.
There is a team championship at the end of the year. You can read about the format here.
World Ranking Points
The players who signed for LIV expected, as part of the deal, that they could still earn world ranking points in the near future, which would help meet qualifying criteria to play in the majors.
LIV Golf events don’t qualify for world ranking points and have had one application rejected already. This means the rankings are skewed, with top players like Rahm teetering on the cusp of the top 100.
The ongoing second application feels more sustained and promising. The big format change from 54 holes to 72 was part of their efforts to appease the Official World Golf Ranking board (OWGR), as well as help players prepare for the majors, which are also 72 holes.
LIV was originally rejected because of the closed-style nature of the league, and also with concerns that the team format could compromise the players’ performance in the individual format.
I thought the PGA Tour/DP World Tour/LIV Golf war was over?
It was meant to be over on June 6, 2023, when ex-PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan publicly announced a framework agreement with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which bankrolls LIV.
However, there has been no solid agreement since, and talks have fizzled out. There had been litigation filed against the tour by 11 LIV players, because the tour suspended them, but those fires were put out in the name of friendship. That’s about as far as niceties went, though. Instead, the PGA Tour made a deal with Strategic Sports Group (SSG), which secured $1.5 billion for an equity program for PGA Tour players.
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The PGA Tour don’t need the PIF for money anymore, and the PIF have never needed money, period. Harmony was supposedly at the heart of the framework agreement, but new PGA Tour boss Brian Rolapp has other fish to fry, as he looks to streamline the PGA Tour’s schedule in the coming years.
This is all before the various legal hurdles in the way of the PGA Tour merging with LIV Golf, and the role of the US Department of Justice in ensuring fair competition. It all got a bit much, essentially.
What do the key protagonists say about it all?
Back in August, new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp revealed he hadn’t spoken to anyone from the PIF, some 18 days into his reign. Now in December, the rumour mill hasn’t been churning within this story like it used to.
At the Hero World Challenge this month, Tiger Woods wasn’t even asked for an update about talks with the PIF. Woods chairs the Future Competition Committee, which is charged with forming the tour’s competitive model.
In November, here is what Rory McIlroy said at CNBC’s CEO Council Forum:
“You see some of these other sports that have been fractured for so long. You look at boxing for example, or you look at what’s happened in motor racing in the United States with Indy and NASCAR and everything else, I think for golf in general it would be better if there was unification.
“But I just think with what’s happened over the last few years, it’s just going to be very difficult to be able to do that.”
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How much money has LIV spent?
When we say the PIF has an endless pit of money, it isn’t far from the truth. Money in Sport recently reported that $5 billion has been put in to make LIV work. This includes things such as the $25 million prize funds at each event (14 events in 2026), running costs for tournaments, and player sign-up fees, among other things.
Can LIV players play in the Ryder Cup?
Yes. So far, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton have all played in the Ryder Cup while under LIV supervision.
Koepka won the PGA Championship in 2023, which helped earn enough points to attract a captain’s pick to play for Team USA that year. DeChambeau and Hatton respectively qualified for the USA and Europe in 2025, while Rahm got a captain’s pick from Europe’s Luke Donald.
To play for America, you must be a PGA of America member, and the organisation has LIV on its list of ‘approved tours’. To play for Europe, you need to be a member of the DP World Tour and not face any sanctions. We will explain more below, but Rahm and Hatton appealed their sanctions and were able to play in 2025.
Stars facing heavy fines
This issue is not as much under LIV’s control as the OWGR mission. But it could cause angst among its ranks, as when 2026 begins, they are turning off the tap and not paying fines for players who are still members of the DP World Tour (what was called the European Tour).
The main focus is on Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton. This European pair joined LIV in 2024 and kept their DP World Tour memberships, meaning that when the DP World Tour earned the right to fine and suspend members for playing in conflicting LIV events, the hammer came down each time they teed it up with LIV. LIV has footed each bill, but that is changing next year.
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They used the loophole of appealing them, which has delayed their payments for well over a year now, and let them compete at the Ryder Cup. Those payments will need to be made soon but, assuming Rahm and Hatton plan to stay with LIV, invoices will continually be sent their way, and to players that are still DP World Tour members.
So can LIV players play on the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour?
Yes, they can play on the PGA Tour, but they have to wait out a year-long suspension. And yes, they can play on the DP World Tour, as long as they address their sanctions in some capacity. Then, they can play as a member or, if they are eligible, through various tournament criteria.
How do they play in majors?
Before some players moved to LIV, they had already won majors, and that can mean long-term major immunity. For example, Phil Mickelson has won the Masters and the PGA, which gives lifetime exemptions. He also won The Open in 2013, which means he can play in it until he is 60.
Bryson DeChambeau won the US Open in 2024, which means he can play in that for another 10 years. So, there are plenty of past champions’ avenues. Also, if the players who are eligible for majors play well enough in them, they earn spots for next year. If you play in majors, you can also earn world ranking points to climb the rankings, which also opens another pathway.
In 2025, the Open and the US Open created new LIV-specific criteria, whereby the highest-ranked ineligible player in the LIV standings, at the time of the designated cut-off date, could play.
Below are the links to NCG pieces on how to play in each major. If a LIV player meets any of the criteria, they can play:
How to qualify for the Masters
How to qualify for the PGA Championship
How to qualify for the US Open
What is going on with contracts?
This is a topic that has gained traction in recent days as five-time major champion Koepka has now left LIV Golf.
He once admitted that had he not been crippled by injuries and seemingly fearing for his career, the decision to join LIV might’ve been harder. When asked if it was a big moment for his ex-employers after he won the PGA Championship in 2023, he quickly dashed that notion and focused more on what it meant for him.
Two days before Christmas, it was announced he was leaving LIV. If he wants to join the PGA Tour again after leaving three years ago, he will have to wait. NCG understands that he would need to serve a year’s suspension from the last round he played with LIV, which would take us to August 2026.
Nonetheless, presuming Koepka wants back in on the PGA Tour, the forthcoming onboarding process will be fascinating. Fans might view Koepka as the first domino to fall, and that more stars might leave at the end of their contracts.
Each LIV player is on a contract, and the shady, unpublicised nature of them creates a vacuum of speculation as to when players might decide they’ve had enough of LIV, if they want.
Will these teams ever become franchises?
Each LIV team has a captain. Rahm is the captain of Legion XIII, DeChambeau is the captain of Crushers, and so on. As well as performing on the golf course, there is an expectation that the captains lead the teams’ efforts outside of the ropes to grow and sprout into franchises. Each captain owns equity in the team, too.
Presumably, this would mean attracting blue-chip companies to invest and become sponsors, and said companies won’t do that without a forecast of profit.
While this might be realistic for a team with Rahm and Hatton (Legion XIII), or Johnson and Reed (4Aces), you wonder how a team that currently features Kevin Na, Yubin Jang, Jinichero Kozuma and Danny Lee (the Ironheads) is remotely marketable. This is not the only team that falls into this category, either.
NOW READ: How far have the LIV golfers fallen in the world rankings?
NOW READ: How does LIV Golf Q School work in 2026?
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