After news broke that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund would cease backing LIV Golf beyond this season, putting its future in doubt, Jon Rahm was asked in May about the status of his contract with the tour. “I don’t see many ways out,” the 31-year-old Spaniard answered pragmatically.
Rahm’s next steps appear dependent on whether LIV can secure external funding to continue operating beyond this year—if its 2026 schedule can even be completed—but in the meantime, his golden handcuffs haven’t been so bad. Rahm’s contract, which reportedly guaranteed him at least $300 million when the former world No. 1 left the PGA Tour in December 2023 to sign with LIV, has made him the world’s highest-paid golfer for the third consecutive year.
Forbes estimates Rahm hauled in $111 million over the last 12 months before taxes and agent fees, sending his total pay for the past three years north of $400 million. His compensation since last June includes an estimated $101 million in prize money and on-course bonuses as well as $10 million in off-course earnings from brand partnerships, appearance fees and licensing income. In addition to his contractual guarantee with LIV, which Forbes estimates to be worth $50 million for the past year, Rahm pulled in an $18 million bonus in 2025 as LIV’s individual champion for the second year in a row, and he has won two tournaments so far this season, helping push his total up 9% from the estimated $102 million he pocketed in the 12 months that ended in June 2025.
As a whole, however, golf’s biggest stars have seen their paychecks dip. Together, the sport’s ten top earners have made an estimated $536 million since last year’s U.S. Open, down 12% from last year’s $612 million and 29% from the record $752 million of 2023, the first full year to incorporate LIV’s initial wave of massive signing bonuses.
The decline is in part the result of LIV golfers Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson dropping off the list, with their original 2022 contracts having expired or nearing completion. The embattled tour also hasn’t made any big-ticket additions to its roster recently, leaving Bryson Dechambeau (No. 4 among the world’s highest-paid golfers with $52 million) and Joaquin Niemann (tied for seventh with $34 million) as the only LIV golfers to make the cut other than Rahm.
In addition, increased parity on the PGA Tour, more limited playing schedules, changes to the tour’s bonus structure and plateauing purses at its events meant some of the game’s established stars just didn’t win as much as they had in 2024 and early 2025. All six PGA golfers appearing in the earnings ranking for at least a second straight year—Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Xander Schauffele, Hideki Matsuyama and Collin Morikawa—made less on the course than they did for the 2025 list. (The lone newcomer to the top ten is 35-year-old Englishman Tommy Fleetwood, who won $10 million last year for his first-ever PGA Tour victory, at the Tour Championship in August, and whose $36 million in total income was good for sixth place in the 2026 ranking.)
Still, as the dust starts to settle on the PGA Tour’s war with LIV, golfers are much better off now than they were in 2022, when the renegade tour upended the sport’s economic structure. Before LIV, the upper echelon of PGA regular-season events offered a relatively modest $12 million in total prize money, but in 2022, the Players Championship boosted its purse to $20 million, and the PGA now has eight “signature events” offering $20 million in prize money, in addition to the four majors, which set their own purses.
Players are also getting larger bonuses from other sources, such as the Comcast Business Tour Top 10, a prize pool rewarding the PGA’s top regular-season performers that climbed from $10 million in its 2021 debut to $40 million by 2025 as part of an effort to keep players from defecting to LIV.
Meanwhile, the PGA Tour announced in January that it was enhancing its player equity program, expanding the number of golfers who have stakes in the for-profit entity that houses the tour’s sponsorship and media deals. Introduced in 2024 after a commitment of up to $3 billion from the Strategic Sports Group, the program had already granted more than $1 billion in equity value to almost 200 players, the tour says. A proposed two-track system, separating the tour’s top players into an elite tier with promotion and relegation beginning in 2028, could also open the door to bigger prizes with a less demanding schedule.
The PGA is remaining tight-lipped on whether it will offer LIV players a soft landing to reap those rewards if its chief competitor crumbles. Brooks Koepka was the first to return to the PGA Tour from LIV this year under punitive conditions, with the five-time major champion declared ineligible for equity grants and FedEx Cup bonuses and required to donate $5 million to charity. Patrick Reed also applied for reinstatement after the expiration of his LIV contract last year but was not fast-tracked back and is instead competing on Europe’s DP World Tour until he is eligible to return to the PGA Tour next year.
It’s unclear how many LIV golfers may attempt to follow them in the coming months while CEO Scott O’Neil races to ensure the tour’s survival, but whether or not LIV still exists in some form next year, it will have a lasting impact on golf’s top earners.
The World’s Highest-Paid Golfers 2026
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Rahm’s Legion XIII captured the LIV team championship in a sudden-death playoff against Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers GC in August, and the tour’s two-time reigning individual champion is in first place in the standings again this year, with two wins and seven top-five finishes through nine events. The 31-year-old Spaniard’s success hasn’t always translated to his showdowns against the PGA Tour’s best in recent years, but the former world No. 1 tied for second at the PGA Championship in May, his first top-five finish at a major since his 2023 Masters win, before he joined LIV.
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Scheffler has retained his grip on golf’s world No. 1 ranking for more than three years straight, claiming his fourth major crown in July at the British Open and his 20th career PGA Tour title in January in La Quinta, California. The 29-year-old American still needs to win the U.S. Open to complete the career Grand Slam, which he could do on Sunday at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, New York, on his 30th birthday. Scheffler’s earnings are bolstered by brand deals with Huntington Bank, Nike and TaylorMade, among others.
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In April, McIlroy won the Masters for the second year in a row, overcoming a late push from Scheffler to prevail by one stroke and take home a record $4.5 million prize. But the 37-year-old Northern Irishman didn’t tack on any titles between those two weekends at Augusta National as he scaled back his schedule to spend more time with his family and prioritize majors. Sponsors like Nike, Optum and FM Global don’t mind as long as all eyes remain on McIlroy on the biggest stages, helping him reach an estimated $50 million in off-course income over the past year—the best mark in golf.
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Although DeChambeau trails Rahm in LIV Golf’s individual points standings this season, the 32-year-old American’s popularity is growing thanks to his YouTube channel, which has 2.7 million subscribers. Videos of his rounds with Adam Sandler and Stephen Curry each have more than 9 million views, and DeChambeau mused to reporters at a tournament in May that, if LIV disbands, he might just focus on YouTube rather than pay the penalties the PGA Tour might impose for reinstatement.
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Between his recovery from a torn Achilles in March 2025, back surgery in October 2025 and a car accident on March 27 that resulted in him being arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and spending nearly three months at a rehab center, Woods hasn’t swung a golf club much lately. But his Jupiter Links team did finish in second place in the TGL golf league he cofounded with McIlroy, awarding the 50-year-old superstar about $1 million in prize money. Woods made his season debut during the TGL finals on March 24, days before his car crash, and most of his long-term brand partners, including 2K, Bridgestone, Monster Energy and Rolex, have stayed with him.
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Long considered one of the most talented golfers never to have won a PGA tournament, with top-five finishes at all four majors on his résumé, Fleetwood finally got over the hump at the Tour Championship in August. The 35-year-old Englishman tacked on $2.25 million in prize money for winning the TGL Championship in March with Los Angeles Golf Club. Fleetwood split with Nike this year to become an apparel free agent, but he added a new sponsorship deal in March with alternative investing giant Blackstone.
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Matsuyama has been relatively quiet on the course since winning the Sentry in Hawaii in January 2025, but the 2021 Masters champion is still a marketing force in his native Japan as one of the country’s biggest sporting stars, working with companies including Lexus, Nomura, NTT Data, Srixon and Tokyo Electron. The 34-year-old Matsuyama also collected a $1 million prize in December as the winner of the Hero World Challenge, an exhibition Woods hosts for his foundation.
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The youngest player in Forbes’ golf earnings ranking for the second consecutive year, the 27-year-old Niemann nabbed an $8 million bonus for finishing second in LIV’s individual standings in 2025 and sits in third this season, behind Rahm and DeChambeau. In an interview with the Beyond the Clubhouse podcast in May, Niemann said that, if LIV folds, he would be happy to play on Europe’s DP World Tour to earn his way back to the PGA Tour.
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Schauffele picked up his lone victory of 2025 in the Baycurrent Classic at Japan’s Yokohama Country Club, winning $1.44 million, and his consistency netted him a $6 million bonus for second place in the Comcast Business Tour Top 10 standings. This year, as the 32-year-old American searches for the form that carried him to titles at both the PGA Championship and the British Open in 2024, Schauffele has posted top-ten performances at the Players Championship, the Masters and the PGA Championship.
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After a three-year drought, Morikawa finally added another trophy to his collection at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February, taking home the $3.6 million winner’s check. The 29-year-old American was also Fleetwood’s teammate on the TGL-winning Los Angeles Golf Club, good for another $2.25 million in prize money. Off the course, Morikawa has added 2K, Intersport, Stanley and Travelers as sponsors since last summer, giving him 15 partners in all.
The 2026 Forbes list of the world’s highest-paid golfers tracks earnings over the last 12 months, dating to the 2025 U.S. Open. All figures are rounded to the nearest $1 million.
In addition to prize money, the on-course figures include bonuses from the PGA Tour, as well as annual payments that some athletes receive from LIV Golf, carrying over from their initial deals to join that tour. (Based on conversations with more than a dozen industry experts, Forbes estimates that top-tier LIV players received half their guarantees upfront while lower-tier players received smaller sums in bulk. Forbes generally estimates any remaining guaranteed money is being paid in equal annual installments across four-year contracts.)
The off-course earnings figures are an estimate of sponsorship deals, appearance fees, and memorabilia and licensing income over the last 12 months, plus cash returns from any businesses in which the athlete has a significant interest. Forbes does not include investment income such as interest payments or dividends but does account for payouts from equity stakes athletes have sold. Forbes does not deduct for taxes or agents’ fees.
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