St Andrews in 2027:
Two Planning Problems, One Trip
St Andrews in 2027: Two Planning Problems, One Trip
If you’ve had St Andrews 2027 on your radar, you already know: the ticket ballot for The 155th Open Championship opens today. Two weeks to enter, one shot at being there for one of the most significant championships in recent memory. But here’s what most golfers planning this trip don’t realize until it’s too late. Attending The Open and playing the Old Course are two completely separate planning problems. They require different timelines, different strategies, and different kinds of luck. Confusing them, or assuming one leads to the other, is how golfers end up in Scotland in July 2027 having done neither.
The 155th Open Championship runs July 11 through 18, 2027, the 31st time the iconic Old Course will have staged the Championship. It will also mark 100 years since Bobby Jones triumphed at St Andrews in 1927, winning by six shots to successfully defend his title from the previous year. Demand for everything associated with this trip, tickets, accommodation, tee times, and flights, will be unlike anything we’ve seen since 2022.
Let’s walk through both planning problems clearly.
Problem One: Getting Into The Open
The Ticket Ballot is open from July 6 to 24, 2026. Whether you enter the Ticket Ballot, secure your place early with a ticket-inclusive accommodation package, or elevate your week with Ticket Plus or hospitality, there are several ways to experience The 155th Open.
You register through the R&A’s official site, enter the ballot, and wait. If selected, you’ll be offered the chance to purchase tickets for specific days of the championship week.
A few things worth knowing before you enter:
The ballot is for spectator tickets. This gives you access to the grounds to watch the world’s best players compete on the Old Course. It does not give you any priority, access, or advantage when it comes to playing the course yourself.
There are also official hospitality options, ticket-plus packages, and accommodation bundles that include tickets. These don’t require ballot luck, but they come at a significant premium. For some travelers, particularly those who want the week organized around comfort and guaranteed access, these packages are worth the investment.
One thing I tell clients when they’re weighing the ballot versus a package route: think about what you’re actually building. Is this a trip around The Open, with golf and Scotland as the backdrop? Or is it a Scotland golf trip that happens to include the championship? The answer shapes everything else you plan.
Problem Two: Playing the Old Course
This is where the planning gets more complicated, and where I see the most mistakes.
The Old Course operates a ballot system for visitor tee times, and it has nothing to do with the Open ticket ballot. The ballot is drawn two days before play. Entries close at 2pm, and results are typically available by 4pm. A ballot entry can include two, three, or four golfers, and you cannot enter as a single.
That sounds manageable until you factor in 2027.
Demand for Old Course tee times in 2027 is expected to be particularly high due to The Open Championship returning to St Andrews, and the Old Course will be closed for an extended period during the second half of June through to the last week of July, reducing overall tee time availability throughout the season.
This compression matters. The course will be unavailable for most of the summer during what would normally be peak season. That pushes enormous demand into the weeks surrounding the championship, and into the shoulder months of April, May, and October.
Guaranteed tee times at the Old Course through authorized golf tour operators typically sell out 15 to 18 months in advance. By the time notifications from the advance application process go out in October, most authorized operator allotments are already 100 percent sold.
Read that again. If you’re waiting to see how the ballot goes before booking, you’ve already missed the guaranteed tee time window.
The Advance Application Process: A Third Option Worth Understanding
Beyond the daily ballot and authorized operator packages, there is a direct application process through the St Andrews Links Trust. The Links Trust accepts applications for Old Course tee times in the last week of August and first week of September each year for the following season. The selection process is based on a lottery, and successful applicants are notified in October.
For the 2027 season, that application window opens in late August 2026. This is separate from the Open ticket ballot, and it requires the lead applicant to apply directly to the Links Trust.
It’s a real pathway, but it comes with meaningful risk. If you apply in September and hear back in October, and you’ve been waiting to confirm your trip around that result, most of the best accommodation, courses, and travel options will already be gone. I’ve seen this play out. The golfer wins the lottery, calls to start planning, and then we’re piecing together the trip with what’s left.
How to Actually Plan This
Here’s what I tell anyone calling me about St Andrews in 2027.
Start planning now, not after the Open ballot closes in July. The two planning tracks are independent, and the one that matters most for your trip, the actual tee time, runs on a completely different timeline.
If you want a guaranteed spot on the Old Course, you need to work with an authorized operator. Those who are willing to travel during shoulder months, particularly April, May, and October, will have better chances of securing a guaranteed tee time. Peak summer availability is tightest in any year, and 2027 will be more constrained than most.
If your goal is to attend The Open and play the Old Course on the same trip, that’s absolutely doable. But it takes sequencing. The championship runs July 11 to 18. Playing the Old Course during that window isn’t possible since the course is closed for the event. Most clients in this situation will either extend their trip into early July or come back the following week, with the course reopening after the championship.
Build the Scotland trip around both goals, not just one. The Old Course is the centerpiece, but it’s surrounded by some of the finest links golf in the world. Kingsbarns, Carnoustie, Crail, and the New Course at St Andrews all sit within easy reach. A well-built itinerary treats the Old Course as the anchor, not the only reason to be there.
And for the non-golfers in your group: St Andrews itself is worth the trip. The town is compact and walkable, historically dense, and genuinely beautiful. There’s the cathedral ruins, the castle, the University (one of the oldest in the English-speaking world), and a coastline that holds up on any grey Scottish afternoon. A well-planned week here works for everyone at the table, not just the golfers.
The Part Most People Skip Until It's Too Late
Ballot entries tend to spike the year after a major Open Championship, and even golfers with industry connections find the Old Course humbling. As one local confirmed: “Anybody who thinks they have a secret way of getting on the Old Course, it’s just not true. They come through the same system.”
The honest answer is that luck is still part of it. But the golfers who play the Old Course in 2027 won’t be the ones who got lucky with the ballot in June. They’ll be the ones who started planning in 2025.
If you’re serious about St Andrews in 2027, whether that means attending The Open, playing the Old Course, or both, reach out now. I work with people on the ground in St Andrews who know this planning process from every angle, and the window to do this properly is already narrowing.