FedEx Cup
The FedEx Cup is the PGA Tour’s season-long points competition, where players collect points based on how they finish in tournaments across the year and compete for a championship decided in a three-event playoff.
What is the FedEx Cup?
The FedEx Cup is the trophy and the title awarded to the best player across an entire PGA Tour season, not the winner of any single tournament. Golfers earn points at nearly every event they play from January through August, and those points decide who reaches the season-ending playoffs and, ultimately, who is crowned champion.
The PGA Tour launched the competition in 2007, and it has been sponsored by FedEx from the start. Its arrival gave men’s professional golf its first real playoff system, borrowing an idea familiar from other American sports: a regular season that sets the field, followed by a postseason that decides the title. The 2026 season marks the 20th edition.
Two things share the name. There is the FedEx Cup itself, the physical trophy, and there is the season-long points race that determines who lifts it. When someone asks who won the FedEx Cup, they mean the player who came out on top of that season-long chase.
How the FedEx Cup works
Every tournament on the PGA Tour schedule is worth a set number of FedEx Cup points, handed out by finishing position. Bigger events are worth more. A win at one of the four majors or THE PLAYERS Championship is worth 750 points, a Signature Event win is worth 700, a standard full-field win is worth 500, and smaller additional events pay 300 to the winner, according to the PGA Tour. Points drop off down the leaderboard, so a runner-up earns far more than someone who scrapes into the weekend.
Those points build a season-long standings table. After the final regular-season event, the Wyndham Championship, the top 70 players qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs, a run of three tournaments in August. The field shrinks as the playoffs go, and there are no weekend cuts within these events.
| Playoff event | Venue | Field |
|---|---|---|
| FedEx St. Jude Championship | TPC Southwind, Memphis | 70 players |
| BMW Championship | Rotates annually (Bellerive Country Club, St. Louis in 2026) | 50 players |
| Tour Championship | East Lake Golf Club, Atlanta | 30 players |
The 30 players who reach the Tour Championship at East Lake play for the title. The winner there is the FedEx Cup champion. Golf.com and the PGA Tour both note a significant rule change for 2025: the Tour Championship dropped its old “Starting Strokes” system, under which the points leader teed off the week already at 10 under par. Now, all 30 finalists start level at even par and play a straight 72-hole stroke-play event. Lowest score over four days takes the Cup.
FedEx Cup vs the Tour Championship
This trips up a lot of people, because the two are tied together, but they are not the same thing. The Tour Championship is a single golf tournament, the last event on the calendar, played at East Lake every year. The FedEx Cup is the season-long competition that the Tour Championship settles.
Under the current format, whoever wins the Tour Championship is automatically the FedEx Cup champion, so the two trophies go to the same person. The distinction still matters, though. A player can win a lot of Tour Championships historically without that meaning much on its own, but the FedEx Cup rewards a full season of steady, high-level golf that earned them a spot in the final 30 to begin with.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Tour Championship | The final playoff event, held at East Lake in Atlanta, whose winner takes the FedEx Cup |
| FedEx Cup | The season-long points title that the Tour Championship decides |
What the FedEx Cup winner gets
The prize is enormous. The FedEx Cup champion earns a $10 million bonus, and the win also counts as an official PGA Tour victory that brings a five-year exemption guaranteeing playing privileges on Tour. The wider playoff bonus pool is worth close to $100 million, spread across the players who make the postseason, per the PGA Tour.
That payout is a big reason players who have already won majors still chase the Cup. It also feeds a long-running debate in golf about prestige. The FedEx Cup is not a major championship, and many fans and players still rank a green jacket at the Masters or a Claret Jug above it. What the Cup measures is different: consistency across a whole season rather than one brilliant week.
FedEx Cup champions
Tiger Woods won the first FedEx Cup in 2007 and took a second in 2009. Rory McIlroy holds the record with three titles: he won in 2016 and 2019, then again in 2022, based on PGA Tour and ESPN records. Tommy Fleetwood won his first in 2025.
| Year | Champion |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Tommy Fleetwood |
| 2024 | Scottie Scheffler |
| 2023 | Viktor Hovland |
| 2022 | Rory McIlroy |
| 2021 | Patrick Cantlay |
| 2020 | Dustin Johnson |
Related Golf Terms
- Grand slam — Winning all four professional major championships in a single year.
- Gallery — The crowd of spectators watching a tournament.
- Rules official — An on-course authority who interprets and applies the rules.
- Career grand slam — Winning each of the four majors at some point over a career.
- Local rules — Course-specific rules supplementing the standard Rules of Golf.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the FedEx Cup a major?
No. The four majors are the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open, and The Open Championship. The FedEx Cup is a separate season-long points title, not a major, though its $10 million prize dwarfs what any single major pays.
How do you win the FedEx Cup?
A player earns points all season to reach the three-event playoffs, then advances through to the 30-man Tour Championship. Since 2025, the lowest four-round score at that final event wins the Cup outright.
How much does the FedEx Cup winner get?
The champion receives a $10 million bonus, on top of any prize money earned during the season. The full playoff bonus pool is close to $100 million.
Who has won the most FedEx Cups?
Rory McIlroy has won it three times, most recently in 2022.
When did the FedEx Cup start?
The PGA Tour introduced it in 2007, sponsored by FedEx, as men’s professional golf’s first playoff-style postseason.
Sources
- PGA Tour. “FedExCup Overview.” Accessed July 2026.
https://www.pgatour.com/fedexcup/overview - ESPN. “What is the FedEx Cup? 2025 playoff format, schedule, prize.” Accessed July 2026.
https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/45908463/what-fedex-cup-2025-playoff-format-schedule-prize - Golf.com. “2025 FedEx Cup, explained: Schedule, format and what’s changed.” Accessed July 2026.
https://golf.com/news/2025-fedex-cup-explainer-schedule-format/ - NBC Sports. “FedExCup playoffs: How it works, events, points system, format.” Accessed July 2026.
https://www.nbcsports.com/golf/news/how-the-pga-tour-fed-ex-cup-playoffs-work-what-is-at-stake-money-format-events - Wikipedia. “FedEx Cup.” Accessed July 2026.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx_Cup
