Royal Lytham & St Annes to host 2028 Open Championship return

Royal Lytham & St Annes will bring The Open back to Lancashire in 2028, a decision that restores one of golf’s most traditional venues while leaving Donald Trump’s Turnberry on the sidelines again. The championship will run from 30 July to 6 August 2028, making it the 156th Open and the 12th time Royal Lytham has hosted golf’s oldest major.

The choice carries clear institutional weight. Royal Lytham last staged The Open in 2012, when Ernie Els beat Adam Scott in one of the championship’s most dramatic finishes, and the club’s first Open came in 1926, when Bobby Jones won. The 2028 staging arrives exactly 100 years after that first championship and the granting of Royal status to the club, giving The R&A a historic anniversary to frame the return of a course that has long sat near the top of its rota.

At the same time, the decision shows how carefully The R&A is balancing prestige against practical risk. Mark Darbon, the governing body’s chief executive, has said the Lytham return followed substantial work with the club and local stakeholders to improve the venue for a modern championship. He has also acknowledged that the course is not the easiest site to operate and that The R&A wants to manage the event carefully there. That caution matters in an era when The Open now draws north of 250,000 spectators across the week, and the governing body wants to sell around 100,000 more tickets at Lytham than it did in 2012.

Turnberry’s absence was the other defining message in the decision. The Ayrshire course last hosted The Open in 2009, but The R&A has said its transport links, accommodation options and location make it difficult to stage a modern championship there. The venue’s association with Trump has also made it one of the sport’s most politically sensitive properties, and its continued exclusion suggests The R&A is still weighing reputational exposure alongside commercial and logistical concerns.

Muirfield also missed out despite renewed pressure for a return. Rory McIlroy said in January that it deserved to be restored to the rota after the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers changed its membership policy in 2017 to allow female applicants. But The R&A opted for a safer, more familiar choice in Royal Lytham, signaling that in golf’s most visible championship, tradition still wins when it can be matched with control.