Aiming for three in a row

Back-to-back LET ‘Tournament of the Year’ winner, the KPMG Women’s Irish Open targets an unprecedented three-peat in 2026 at The K Club, boosted by stars like Charley Hull, Leona Maguire and a deepening pool of homegrown talent.

In a schedule comprising 30 events, held across 21 countries and over five continents, to be awarded the distinction of the Ladies European Tour’s ‘Tournament of the Year’ is quite the honour. To earn the accolade in successive seasons, however, takes some doing. But that’s exactly what the KPMG Women’s Irish Open has achieved.

And though the 2026 staging – which will be the fifth running of the event since it was revived after a 10-year hiatus – is still five months away, tournament promoters Forefront Sports are pulling out all the stops to ensure that the impeccably high standards remain in place and that a rare three-peat of ‘Tournament of the Year’ recognitions could follow.

It was recently announced that world number three Charley Hull would return to make her second successive appearance at the event, and her presence alone raises the bar considerably.

The Englishwoman – a three-time LPGA Tour winner with an additional five victories on the LET – has already found herself in the winner’s circle in 2026, claiming a one-stroke victory in the season-opening PIF Saudi International, and continues to be one of the most recognisable faces in the women’s game.

“We’re incredibly excited and very grateful to have her back this year,” said Cian Branagan, Forefront Group CEO. “It’s a massive coup for the event. We’re up against the LPGA Tour’s FM Championship in Boston, so getting players isn’t easy, but we’ve got a few more big announcements coming down the line.”

In the runup to last year’s event, Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Woad’s inclusion was one of the big talking points, and with good reason. In 2024, Woad had played a starring role alongside the Irish trio of Sara Byrne, Áine Donegan and Beth Coulter in Great Britain and Ireland’s thrilling Curtis Cup victory over the United States at Sunningdale, just months after winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

Billed as a star of the future on the pro tours, she became a star of the present when she stormed to a six-stroke victory at Carton House – a win that laid the foundations for her subsequent win at the co-sanctioned ISPS HANDA Women’s Scottish Open in her first tournament as a professional.

Woad is firmly in the conversation to be selected for Solheim Cup duty this year, and Branagan is hoping that the proximity of women’s golf’s showpiece team event to one of the LET’s jewels could see even further star power added to the field in the meantime.

“Because we’re two weeks before the Solheim Cup, hopefully we will get a lot of the European team, similar to what we saw at the Ryder Cup in 2023,” he said, referencing the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, a fortnight prior to the Ryder Cup in Rome, where all 12 European team members played before travelling as a team for practice sessions in the Eternal City.

Though any such arrangements are a long way off, it would be a fitting reward for the tournament managers who took considerable risk and devoted countless hours and energies to bring it back at Dromoland Castle in 2022.

The realisation of what Forefront had achieved properly hit home with Branagan during the tournament that year at Dromoland – a golf course designed by his late grandfather, JB Carr.

“It was a tough few months for everybody to get it all up and running,” he recalled. “Standing by my grandad’s tree there on the 18^th, it was the first time I took stock and I was so proud of the work that everyone put into it.

“It’s mad to think that that was four-and-a-half years ago now. We’ve had two at Dromoland and two at Carton House, and the tournament has been on an upward curve all the way.”

Despite the experience of running those four editions, it doesn’t get any easier. This year, The K Club’s South Course will set the stage, and Branagan explains that a new venue is only one of the factors that adds to his team’s workload.

“Ideally, from a tournament organisational point of view, you’d stay at the same venue every year and you can kind of rinse and repeat, but that’s not fair,” he said. “I think our Irish Opens should be spread around the island, new courses every other year. That all adds to the workload, of course – building new relationships with venues, with partners, with councils – but the important part, going back to year one, was getting that right, making sure that was a success, and then building on that year on year.

“We have a part to play in that, KPMG as title sponsor have a part to play in that, but the attendances are growing, women’s golf is growing, and we’re riding along with that wave as well.”

One of the most pleasing growth aspects over the four years to date has been the number of Irish players teeing it up, and in many ways, the growth in home talent mirrors the growth of the event itself. Though it can be further traced back to the Solheim Cup in 2011.

“Legacy is an easy word to put out there, but we, as an island, did a great job with the Solheim Cup and we’re going to do a great job with Adare Manor next year, but the actual tangible results from the Solheim Cup is what we’re seeing now,” Branagan argued.

“We’ve got nine professional players on tour. If you go back a few years, I think we only had two players with tour cards in Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow.

“Then, Leona has been such an inspirational figure in Irish golf, and we’re seeing the results of that now too. In 2022, I think we had nine Irish players in the field, and last year we had 16. Most of them had tour cards, some were in college, and then we had some real young talent, so that’s incredible. I believe we’ve entered the golden age of Irish women’s golf.”

It’s not just the opportunities that the tournament presents at home either, it opens doors to other events on the LET and LET Access Series circuits as well with the quid pro quo nature of national invitations which can prove invaluable for professionals in their early years or for the elite amateurs to gain experience before dipping their toes into the professional waters.

It’s arguably the crowds, however, that sets the KPMG Women’s Irish Open apart, and this is a common refrain from the homegrown players and international participants that have teed it up over the four years.

“We had 12,000 spectators there on the Saturday at Carton House,” Branagan remembered. “That’s a major championship sort of crowd in the women’s game and it resonates with the players. It feels like a major championship with the setup, the hospitality, the grandstands and that, but it’s the Irishness of the welcome from the crowds, of all the kids there. The players are treated like superstars and rightfully so.

“The ‘Tournament of the Year’ award is voted for by the players, so that’s testament to everybody involved.”

This year, as previously mentioned, it will be The K Club that welcomes players and fans alike, and as a venue that’s been at the cutting edge of professional tournament golf in this country for more than three decades, it’s got all the credentials to see the bar raised even higher.

“They want to elevate the event even more because it’s their name on the gates and on the posters,” Branagan explained. “They really want to invest the resources and finances into the experience for people coming on site.

“We’re on the South Course as well, which is good because we can create our own identity there. It’s a five-star venue with a five-star team.”

Topping the first two years at Dromoland Castle or the following two at Carton House won’t be an easy task, but with headline acts like Leona Maguire and Charley Hull, a deep field of Irish talent including freshly-minted LPGA Tour player Lauren Walsh, budding LET stars like Sara Byrne, Aine Donegan and Anna Foster, and many other giants of ladies European golf, it’s already on the path to do exactly that.