Where to Stay for the Alfred Dunhill Links — St Andrews, Dundee, the East Neuk or Edinburgh

The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship is the only week in the professional calendar played across three courses at once, and that single fact decides where you sleep. For the first three days the field rotates between the Old Course at St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns — one course per day, the order announced before the week — and every pairing plays the Sunday final round at St Andrews. So "where to stay for the Dunhill" is really "which days am I watching, and at which course", and the answer is different for someone who wants Sunday on the Old Course than for someone who wants the celebrity pairings at Kingsbarns on a free Thursday.

The 2026 edition — the championship's 25th — runs 1–4 October 2026, with Bob MacIntyre defending and Bill Murray back in the amateur field. The 2027 dates are not yet published; the event has sat in the first week of October, and everything on this page about the geography holds whichever year you are reading it in. Read this alongside the event guide, which covers the format, the free days and playing the three courses yourself; this page stays on the beds.

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The three courses on a map, and what that does to your week

Two of the three venues are in Fife and one is not. Kingsbarns is seven miles south-east of St Andrews on the coast road — a fifteen-minute drive or a pre-booked taxi, and there is no useful public transport to it. Carnoustie is across the Tay in Angus: about 45 minutes by road from St Andrews via Dundee, or a train from Dundee in roughly a quarter of an hour, with the station a short walk from the Links. St Andrews has no railway station of its own; Leuchars, on the Edinburgh–Dundee line, is the railhead, with a bus or taxi covering the last ten minutes into town. Our St Andrews by train and bus guide has the Leuchars connection in detail, and TripSCOT's Leuchars station page covers the station itself.

That geometry produces one hinge: Dundee sits between St Andrews and Carnoustie on the same railway line, ten to fifteen minutes from Leuchars in one direction and about fifteen from Carnoustie in the other. It is the only base from which all three championship days at the two rail-served venues are a short train ride, and it has the hotel stock that neither St Andrews nor Carnoustie does. Keep that in mind as you read the options below.

Who the week is for — and why the beds are easier than Open week

This is the one week a year you can stand on the Old Course and watch tour professionals — and a field of actors, musicians and retired sportspeople alongside them — for nothing. Thursday, Friday and Saturday are free at all three venues, with no ticket needed. Only the Sunday final round at St Andrews is ticketed, at £20 for an adult (£15 for over-65s, under-18s, students and military free with ID), bought in advance because there are no gate sales. Set that against The Open at St Andrews, where the tickets are balloted and the town's beds are gone a year out, and you have the accommodation argument in one line: the Dunhill is the Old Course at a fraction of the price and a fraction of the squeeze.

A fraction is not zero. St Andrews is a small town with a fixed bed stock, and Dunhill week has grown into one of its busiest of the autumn: the central hotels go early, the B&Bs on The Scores and around Murray Park fill, and rates firm up across the town. But the pressure does not radiate out the way an Open's does — Dundee and Edinburgh are not event-priced for it, and the East Neuk cottages are entering their off-season rather than their peak. Book something cancellable as soon as you decide to come; do not assume you can pick up a St Andrews room in the last fortnight.

St Andrews — the base for Saturday and Sunday

If your week is about the Old Course, stay in the town. Saturday's rotation puts a third of the field there and Sunday puts everyone there, and both days you walk from your door to the ropes along the 18th, past the Old Course Hotel on the 17th and Rusacks on the 18th. The town's accommodation is the same layered picture the Open guide describes — the Old Course Hotel and Rusacks at the top, Rufflets a mile out on the Strathkinness road, the Fairmont two miles south on the cliffs with its own two courses, then the B&B strip along The Scores — and in Dunhill week it goes in roughly that order, with the two on the course first.

Two things differ from July. The university is back in session by October, so the residence rooms the Open guide mentions are a summer-only option and not on the table. And the town is quieter in the evenings than championship week in July: restaurants take bookings, the pubs have room, and the non-golfing half of your party has the cathedral, the castle, West Sands and a proper working town to fill three days with — TripSCOT's St Andrews guide covers that side. From St Andrews, Kingsbarns is a taxi and Carnoustie is a drive or a Leuchars–Dundee–Carnoustie train chain of about an hour; both are day-trips rather than obstacles.

If you also want to play, note that each course is closed to visitors on its own championship day and the Old Course's set-up week takes the tail of September — our Old Course ballot tips cover the closures, and the month-by-month guide explains why the first fortnight of October is otherwise one of the better times to be here. The Old Course itself is £340–£355 in high season; Kingsbarns is £399–£486 and Carnoustie's Championship course £249–£360.

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Dundee — the base for Carnoustie's day, and the honest all-rounder

Fourteen miles north across the Tay Bridge, Dundee is the answer for anyone who has come for Carnoustie, and a better answer than most people expect for the whole week. The city has the hotel inventory St Andrews lacks — Apex City Quay on the waterfront, Malmaison, the Marriott, a Premier Inn and Holiday Inn, and Sleeperz directly beside the railway station — and none of it carries a golf-week premium in October. On Carnoustie's day the train from Dundee takes about 15 minutes and drops you a short walk from the Links (TripSCOT's Carnoustie station page has the walking route). On the St Andrews days it is ten to fifteen minutes to Leuchars, then the bus or a taxi into town. Kingsbarns is the one venue Dundee does not serve well — it is a drive of 40 minutes or so via St Andrews — so if Thursday or Friday at Kingsbarns is your priority, look at the East Neuk instead.

For a non-golfer, Dundee holds its own: the V&A, the Discovery, the waterfront, and a city's worth of restaurants rather than a golf town's. And for a group that wants the Old Course on Sunday but cannot find or justify a St Andrews room, a Dundee hotel plus two short train journeys costs a fraction of the alternative and loses you perhaps 45 minutes a day.

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The East Neuk — the base for Kingsbarns, and for groups

Kingsbarns sits on the coast road between St Andrews and Crail, and the fishing villages beyond it — Crail, Anstruther, Pittenweem, St Monans, Elie — are where the self-catering lives. A cottage in Crail puts you closer to Kingsbarns than St Andrews is, twenty minutes from the Old Course by car and a genuinely pleasant place to spend the evenings; Anstruther and Pittenweem are a few miles further down the coast. This is the group option: four or eight people in one house with a kitchen beats the same number of hotel rooms in town on cost, on breakfast-table logistics and on the walk to the pub. It is also the option whose calendar runs the right way for you — early October is the shoulder of the cottage season, so availability is better and pricing softer than the same houses in July.

The trade-off is Carnoustie. From the East Neuk it is an hour or more by road round the Tay, so a group that wants all three venues needs a driver who does not mind the Friday. Between rounds, the villages are the reason to be there: our East Neuk golf-trip guide covers the courses in them, and TripSCOT's East Neuk guide and Crail page the villages themselves.

Booking approach: the agencies and Airbnb list many of the same cottages at different prices, so it pays to cross-check. Snaptrip compares Fife cottages across agencies with a best-price guarantee, which does that for you.

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Stays in Crail and the East Neuk

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Edinburgh — one or two days by train

Fifty-odd miles away and the deepest hotel stock in the country, none of it priced for a golf event in Angus and Fife. Edinburgh Waverley to Leuchars is about an hour by ScotRail, then the bus or taxi into St Andrews; Waverley to Carnoustie is a direct train of around 80 minutes. That makes the capital a perfectly workable base for a Saturday or Sunday on the Old Course, or a Carnoustie day, without committing to a Fife room for the week — and it gives a non-golfing companion a city rather than a coast. Stay near Waverley or in the New Town for the easiest early departures; TripSCOT's day trips from Edinburgh covers the rest of the week.

The limit is Kingsbarns, which has no rail option from anywhere: from Edinburgh it is a drive, or a train to Leuchars and a taxi through St Andrews. If Kingsbarns is the day you care about, base in Fife.

Which base, by which day

You mainly want	Stay in	Why
Sunday's final round on the Old Course	St Andrews	Walk to the ropes; book first, sells out first
Saturday at St Andrews plus one other course	St Andrews or Dundee	Both reach the Old Course and Carnoustie by train; Dundee has the rooms
Carnoustie's day	Dundee	15 minutes by train, a short walk from the station, hotel stock to spare
Kingsbarns' day, or a free Thursday/Friday with the celebrity pairings	Crail or the East Neuk	Closest beds to Kingsbarns; self-catering for groups; shoulder-season pricing
One or two days, no car	Edinburgh	Direct trains to Leuchars and Carnoustie; no event pricing
All three venues, no car	Dundee	The only base on the line between Leuchars and Carnoustie

When to book

There is no ballot and no fourteen-months-out sell-out here — but there is a pattern. St Andrews' central hotels and the on-course pair go earliest, and once the field and the celebrity names are announced in late summer the B&Bs follow. Dundee and Edinburgh hold availability into the final weeks. The East Neuk cottages are the easiest of all in early October, because the school holidays are over and the summer lets have ended. Whichever you pick, book something with free cancellation the day you decide to come, then refine it: the rotation order is announced close to the week, and knowing which course is on which day is what tells you whether your Thursday is a taxi to Kingsbarns or a train to Carnoustie.

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Dates, the free-day structure and the Sunday ticket prices were read off alfreddunhilllinks.com on 5 September 2026 and are rendered from the site's event register rather than typed here. No accommodation prices appear on this page because none could be verified for Dunhill week; check current rates directly with any property before booking, and treat the pricing descriptions above as the pattern, not a quote.