MILFORD — The spotlight will be on Kensington Metropark next year with the return, for the first time in 25 years, of the PDGA Professional Disc Golf World Championships.
The event will draw 300 elite players from around the globe, as well as thousands of spectators over the course of five days in 2026 and is expected to bring an economic impact to the area of $5 million.
“We are so excited to welcome the 2026 PDGA Professional Disc Golf World Championships to Kensington Metropark,” Amy McMillan, director of Huron-Clinton Metroparks, said. “We take pride in knowing how great the disc golf courses at our parks are, and how much local players enjoy them.
“It is awesome that professional players from around the world are going to get to experience that firsthand. We can’t wait to show players everything Southeast Michigan and the metro Detroit area has to offer.”Kensington, home of Toboggan and Black Locust South 18-hole disc golf courses, was chosen in a bid process for the biggest tournament in the sport. Several factors were taken into consideration for the park’s selection, including infrastructure and capacity to hold such a large event.
But the biggest consideration, said Danny Voss, director of marketing for the Professional Disc Golf Association, is the ability of the course to challenge the best disc golf players in the world.
“It needs to be challenging, the best players are showing up and they are all hungry for that win,” Voss said. “Changes to the Toboggan course, if any, are likely to be minor. It has a history of hosting pro tour events that are already somewhat calibrated to that level of play.”
The Toboggan course at Kensington was originally designed by Discraft owner Jim Kenner for the 2000 World Championships. Since 2002, it has been the official course for the U.S. Amateur Disc Golf Championship and for the past seven years has hosted the Great Lakes Open on the Disc Golf Pro Tour.
The 10,210-foot, par-63 course, according to the Metroparks website, “has a mix of large elevation changes and tight fairways that will test every shot in your bag. Bring a spotter because it has long holes and punishing rough.”
When the world championships return to Kensington for the first time in a quarter century, disc golfers will also play the park’s Black Locust South course, which is getting some upgrades to make it worthy of a world championship course, including five new holes and “tweaking of others,” said Ledgestone CEO Nate Heinold.Ledgestone will oversee the 2026 world championship event at Kensington, working with partners that besides park officials include the Detroit Sports Commission and the Livingston County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Three rounds of the tournament will be held on the Toboggan course which is more open and gives players an opportunity to throw hard in challenging distances, Voss said, while two rounds will be on the Black Locust south course, which is more wooded with narrower fairways.
Combined, the two ensure that the winner of the tournament is the most well-rounded player, Voss added.
To earn one of the roughly 300 invitations to play in the 2026 PDGA Professional Disc Golf World Championships requires accruing points from performing well this season and earning a top tier player rating. The best players get first dibs on registration.
The PDGA was founded in 1976 and now has more than 300,000 members, more than a quarter of a million that have joined in the past 15 years. The sport has hundreds of thousands more active, casual players that enjoy more than 13,000 courses worldwide.
“Disc golf is different in Southeast Michigan,” Heinold said. “We expect a disc golf record crowd in 2026 and cannot wait to show off Kensington Metropark to the disc golf world.”Tickets will for the PDGA World Professional Disc Golf Championships will go on sale in early 2026, with event dates available later this winter. For more information, visit www.pdga.com.
Contact reporter Susan Bromley at sbromley@hometownlife.com
