Disc golf is about to host its biggest event right here in Oakland County.
The 2026 PDGA Professional Disc Golf World Championships will be held Aug. 26-30 at Kensington Metropark in Milford.
“This is the Olympics of disc golf,” said Nate Heinold, the founder and CEO of Ledgestone and tournament director for the Professional Disc Golf Association. “We’re super excited to bring it back to Michigan and southeast Michigan is one of the largest communities for disc golf in the country.”
In what he described as a “full circle moment,” the event will return to Kensington, which first hosted the world championships in 2000.
The park, which features the Toboggan and Black Locust South 18-hole disc golf courses, was selected in a bid process with several
factors taken into consideration. The most important was the ability of the courses to challenge the best players in the world.
Three hundred of those players—208 men and 92 women – will now compete for $300,000 in total prize money and for the title of champion over the course of the five-day tournament. Among them are defending world champion Gannon Buhr, an Iowa native ranked first in the world in disc golf; Paul McBeth, a six-time world champion from Huntington Beach, California; defending women’s champion Ohn Scoggins, a 46-year-old Los Angeles resident who is also a five-time masters champion; and New Yorker Missy Gannon, a two-time major and multi-tour winner.
Attendees can watch these superstars as well as dozens of others of the best in the sport throw discs hundreds of feet down fairways and putt to baskets on greens surrounded by trees, in a gorgeous setting that also features Kent Lake.
Heinold notes that Toboggan is one of the most unique courses in the world, built off multiple sledding hills, and the Black Locust course received tweaks for the world championships. The last seven holes of Black Locust were newly created in the Martindale Beach area, a restoration of sorts of “the tunnel course” at Kensington that was long ago closed.
Viewing spots along the course will include VIP structures, bleachers, shaded areas and more. There will be televisions and video boards on site for watching the broadcast, which will be livestreamed on the Disc Golf Network. More than 70 vendors and food trucks will also be on site.
The PDGA Professional Disc Golf World Championships are kid-friendly, with a Lego zone, climbing wall, inflatables, zipline and more on the weekend, as well as an 18-hole mini disc golf course that adults can also play.
The PDGA is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and disc golf has only grown in popularity, Heinold said, tripling in size since 2019 and the pandemic.
Kirsten Rider, senior director of membership and outreach for the PDGA, is excited to celebrate the sport at the world championships.
“It’s really about this incredible community of people,” Rider said. “We’re excited for everything that has elevated the game over the past 50 years. A grassroots movement has become an incredible sport.”
Tickets for the 2026 PDGA Professional Disc Golf World Championships are selling quickly. To get yours and learn more, visit detroit26.com or The 2026 PDGA Pro World Championships | Disc Golf Pro Tour.
Contact reporter Susan Bromley at sbromley@hometownlife.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tickets, dates, events: Disc Golf World Championships come to Michigan
