This year will be LIV Golf’s fifth season.
The rebel circuit entered the professional tour golf world as a disrupter in 2022 with grand ambitions.
Disruption has indeed followed but the golf world might not have been transformed in quite the manner LIV expected.
The most successful element of the rebel thrust has been to create a strong division between fans – and with it generate headlines and controversy.
Its stars are Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Joaquin Niemann, and the first of those, the Spaniard, is this year seeking a hat trick of Individual Championships.
Who will challenge him for that honour, though? DeChambeau and Niemann will surely be part of the conversation but there are others.
Here are the seven most likely winners of the 2026 title.
The reigning champion – Jon Rahm
Let’s deal with the good news first: the Spanish captain of Legion XIII is completely gun on LIV.
He’s not just ended his two seasons there as the individual champion, he has also finished top three in 10 of his 25 completed starts on the circuit – and has never finished worse than 11th.
By any standard that is sensational golf.
But he’s the fly in the ointment. First up, he’s won just twice and didn’t do so in 2025 (although he was second in three of his last four starts, two of those near misses coming in extra holes).
The other nagging issue is that he hasn’t added to his major championship tally since the 2023 Masters.
The 2026 goal: to win more and to win big.
The machine – Joaquin Niemann
Unlike Rahm, the man who pipped him to the individual title last year, the Torque captain has had no difficulty winning on LIV. He did so twice in 2024 and no less than five times in 2025. He also has eight wins in his last 47 starts worldwide (stretching back to December 2023).
His big problem is the tournaments that truly define a career: the majors. In fact, he’s not just bad at them he is, given his potential, risible.
A fast finish helped him to land T9 in last year’s PGA Championship but it is his only top 10 in 26 starts and the pressure seemed to get to him in last year’s final two majors. He missed the cut in both.
The 2026 goal: keep winning and start contending in the big ones.
The superstar – Bryson DeChambeau
He has, rather mysteriously, won just three times in 45 LIV starts but he is the circuit’s undoubted star attracting fans, wowing social media users and earning millions.
The Crushers captain differs from Rahm and Niemann in one key factor: he contends in, and wins, major championships.
In the last two seasons he has won the US Open, been second in the PGA Championship twice, been sixth and fifth in the Masters, and landed a top 10 in last year’s Open.
The 2026 goal: maintain momentum and win big.
The flying youngster – David Puig
The poster boy at starting a world class career on LIV, the Fireballs 24-year-old had just three top five finishes on LIV in 29 starts ahead of 2025, but he doubled that figure in the dozen starts that followed. He also finished top 20 in all 12.
He has also become a serial top 12 finisher on the DP World Tour landing 10 of them in his last 13 starts including victory in last November’s Australian PGA Championship.
The 2026 goal: a first LIV win and a first top 20 in the majors.
The air miles hoarder – Patrick Reed
Like the Augusta flowers, the 2018 Masters champion remains an April perennial. In fact, he’s finished top 12 in five of the last six Masters and was solo third last spring.
He finished top three in six of his first 17 LIV starts but not one of them was a win. It remained that way midway through last year’s fourth LIV season. Then he won LIV Dallas.
He got his 2026 off to a great start with victory in the Dubai Desert Classic, his 12th career win worldwide.
The 4Aces performer’s 2026 goal: to win again, maybe earning a green jacket in the process.
The Ripper – Cameron Smith
In 2022 the Aussie landed eight worldwide top five finishes, five of them wins including the Open. In 2023 there were seven top fives, two of them wins. In 2023 the top five count remained seven, but there was no win.
The degradation didn’t just continue in 2025, it accelerated in terrifying fashion with just two top fives.
It gets worse because the Ripper captain hasn’t made a cut in his last five major championship including all four last year. It maybe even worse than that because he carded a 78 in three of 2025’s majors.
There is a ray of hope, however, which is that he contended all week when second in November’s Australian PGA Championship, his last start anywhere.
The 2026 goal: to ride the wave of that season closer down under.
The underachiever – Tyrrell Hatton
The Englishman was a winner in his debut LIV season of 2024, a year when he recorded six top fives finishes. But in 2025 he not only registered just two top fives (both of them fifth), he also failed to crack the top 20 in his last four LIV starts.
That’s poor for a golfer of his undoubted quality especially given that he has won twice on the DP World Tour since that first LIV triumph, and has four top 20s in the last eight major championships.
The 2026 goal: a second LIV win and then a third.
Read next: 7 stories that would shock the world in 2026
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Article Link: LIV Golf 2026: The 7 most likely winners of huge $17m prize