Top 100 Golf Courses UK & Ireland 2025/26
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A very warm welcome to the 2025/26 Golf Monthly UK&I Top 100 and Next 100 course rankings in association with Peter Millar.
This is now the 11th of our biennial lists, which we strongly believe have evolved to be an honest, representative and trustworthy ranking of the best 200 courses that are open to all. Initially featuring 120 courses, we made the decision in 2009/10 to switch to a more logical Top 100 at the same time as adding a second tier, the Next 100.
At Golf Monthly, we take great pride in the fact that our Top 100 is compiled by regular, knowledgeable, enthusiastic club golfers. Our reader panel includes one or two who have been with us since the start as well as a couple who made their debuts this time round. They, along with the staff panel, have between them visited every course in the new Top 100 in the two years since the last list was compiled.
Senior panellists Rob Smith and Jeremy Ellwood have been involved in the rankings since 2009, and this has enabled consistency while so much around has changed.
As ever, standards have continued to rise. You rarely see a course in the Top 100 or Next 100 in anything but fine condition, which is perhaps why there has been less change this time round than ever before.
There are few big jumps or falls and just two re-entries, with a couple of other candidates very narrowly missing out. For any course to maintain position within the Top 100 calls for improvement.
With few exceptions, those that have dropped a few places have not declined, they have simply been overtaken by others. Each and every one of our Top 100 courses is still exceptional and comes thoroughly recommended.
No golfer will agree with all of the positions in our new Top 100, but we have always acknowledged that subjectivity is at work, while striving to make it as objective as possible. What we ultimately love about it is that it serves as a source of endless debate and enjoyable discovery.
We are delighted to be continuing our partnership with Peter Millar, one of the world’s leading and most dynamic premium apparel brands. Its products are stocked at almost every course in the Top 100, which makes them a perfect fit with our rankings.
