Grande Prairie to host 2026 Canadian Nationals disc golf championship

Grande Prairie will host Canada’s national disc golf championship for the first time when the 2026 Canadian Nationals Disc Golf Championship arrives July 24-26, putting the city’s parks and volunteers at the center of the sport’s Canadian calendar. The Canadian Disc Golf Association calls it the country’s premier national disc golf event, and the move north to Grande Prairie is a clear sign that the championship has outgrown its traditional hubs.

The PDGA lists the tournament as a sanctioned A-tier, with Greg Hearn as tournament director and Dylan Bressey as assistant tournament director. Its event page showed 397 registered players as of June 22, while local coverage put the expected field at about 450, a gap that suggests the roster was still building as the start date approached. The numbers point to a busy week for organizers and a meaningful tourism draw for northwest Alberta.

Grande Prairie Disc Golf Club vice president Philip Duffy has helped frame the event as a showcase for the city’s disc golf footprint. The club says it was started in 2011 and now has more than 50 members, with three 18-hole courses in operation across the city. That course network is the backbone of the championship: Muskoseepi Park, South Bear Creek Park and the Co-op Community Disc Golf Course at Evergreen Park will all be used during the event.

Those venues give the Nationals a varied local stage. Thrill Hill in Muskoseepi Park is a par-57 course established in 2013, while South Bear Creek is a permanent 18-hole park course that opened in 2017. The Co-op Community course at Evergreen Park runs through sand dunes and pine forest south of the ball diamonds, giving visiting players a different look from hole to hole and showing how deeply the event will lean on Grande Prairie’s public-park infrastructure.

The club says championship week will include social activities and flex C-tier events before the title is decided July 26. The scale is not new for Canadian Nationals, either, with the PDGA noting that the 2025 edition drew nearly 500 players in the Peterborough-Durham-Northumberland region of Ontario. Grande Prairie now gets its turn to prove it can handle a national field, and the city’s first Nationals will test both its course network and its ability to turn disc golf into a regional destination.