Booking & Access
The Open 2027 Tickets: Ballot Results, Resale & Hospitality
The 2027 ballot is closed and results are landing in waves. What a no-result means, the R&A's face-value resale route, hospitality packages and practice rounds.
The Open Championship is not a ticketed event in the same way as a concert or a football match. There is no single sales window, no universal queue that opens at a fixed time. There are instead three distinct routes into the grounds — the public ballot, the hospitality market, and practice round access — each with different lead times, price points, and practical experiences. Understanding which route suits your intentions is the first decision to make.
Route 1: The R&A Public Ballot
The primary route to standard grounds access is the R&A's own ballot system, operated through theopen.com. This is not the same as the Old Course Daily Ballot (which allocates tee times on the course to visiting golfers) — it is a separate system for spectator tickets to the championship. It is also the ticketing hub for The 155th Open at St Andrews in 2027.
One Club first
The ballot is open only to members of One Club, the R&A's free-to-join membership. Sign up at theopen.com before the ballot opens — it costs nothing and it is the gate you have to be through to apply. You must be 16 or over to enter the ballot.
How the ballot works
The R&A opens the ballot roughly a year or more before each championship. You apply online, specifying which days you want to attend and how many tickets you need, including any free junior tickets (see below — they cannot be added later). Applications are drawn at random, and successful entrants are invited to pay for their allocation. Winning a place is not guaranteed by applying early, but you cannot win if you are not registered in One Club and in the ballot when it closes.
For St Andrews events specifically, the ballot is substantially oversubscribed. The 2022 150th Open at St Andrews was reported to have registrations at approximately 8:1 against available tickets for weekend championship days. Demand for Thursday and Sunday tends to exceed Wednesday and Saturday, though all four championship days at a St Andrews Open are competitive.
What to do now
The ticket ballot for The 155th Open at St Andrews (11–18 July 2027) closed on Friday 24 July 2026, and results are being released in waves through August and September. Two things follow from the wave system: no result yet is not a no — later waves keep producing winners — and once the waves finish, the R&A's official face-value Ticket Resale Platform (covered below) is the route back in. The ballot tactics below stand for the next cycle: apply for multiple days to raise your odds of at least one allocation, and apply as a pair rather than a fourball — pairs are statistically easier to accommodate.
If you are allocated tickets, you pay at the time of purchase — the registration is not a commitment to buy. If you are unsuccessful in the ballot, you are not immediately out of options (see below).
Ticket prices (estimated from 2022 and 2024 Opens)
| Day | Estimated price |
|---|---|
| Practice round (Sun–Wed) | £30–£50 |
| Championship day grounds (Thu–Sun) | £95–£130 |
| Four-day grounds pass | £300–£380 (where released) |
| Grandstand seat (add-on) | £50–£120 |
| Junior grounds (under 16) | Free ("Kids Go Free" junior ticket) |
Grounds prices are estimates based on recent Opens, pending R&A confirmation of 2027 prices. Under-16s go free on a "Kids Go Free" junior ticket, but it must be requested inside your ballot application — it cannot be added after the ballot closes.
Route 2: Practice rounds — the underrated option
Practice round tickets (Sunday to Wednesday before the championship — 11–14 July 2027) are cheaper, easier to obtain, and — for many visitors — a better experience than competition day grounds access. They are not widely understood.
On a practice round day at the Open:
- There are no ropes separating spectators from players on most holes. You can walk within ten feet of players as they work through their routines on holes 1 through 16. Only around the 18th green and the practice putting green does the marshalling become more structured.
- Players work through strategic decisions out loud. Practice rounds are reconnaissance — watching a player like Rory McIlroy discuss the 17th Road Hole approach with his caddie from five yards away is a qualitatively different experience from watching the same shot from a grandstand during competition.
- Access to autographs is genuinely possible. Senior players at the Open are more accessible on Tuesday practice mornings than almost anywhere else in professional golf. Around the practice putting green before the first groups go out, and at the 18th green in the afternoon, brief interactions are realistic.
- The course feels like a course rather than an event. No queues at catering concessions. No herding through crowd control corridors. No fight for a sightline.
The practical route to practice round tickets: the R&A releases practice round allocations through the same ballot system, and they are less oversubscribed than championship day tickets. If you are unsuccessful for a championship day, applying for a practice round — Sunday 11 to Wednesday 14 July — significantly improves your chances.
Route 3: Keith Prowse hospitality
Keith Prowse is the R&A's official hospitality partner for The Open Championship. They operate the full range of corporate and private hospitality packages at the venue — from half-day marquee access to multi-day packages with premium positions.
What hospitality actually means at the Open
A hospitality package for the Open is not a ticket with extras. It is a different type of event attendance. You have a dedicated entrance, access to a catered marquee or suite, a bar that doesn't involve a 20-minute queue, and a view of a specific part of the course from a fixed position. What you do not have is the ability to walk freely around 18 holes of a championship golf course and make your own decisions about where to watch.
The correct use of a hospitality package:
- A corporate group entertaining clients for whom the catering and atmosphere are as important as the golf
- A celebration (birthday, anniversary) where a premium experience is the point
- A group where one or more people are not particularly interested in watching a lot of golf
The incorrect use of a hospitality package, if you are the person who wants to spend the day watching as much golf as possible from different vantage points, is to spend a day in a marquee. Buy a grounds ticket and a packed lunch.
Keith Prowse pricing (estimated from 2022 Open)
| Package type | Estimated price per person |
|---|---|
| Half-day hospitality | £500–£800 |
| Full championship day | £800–£1,800 |
| Premium 18th position | £1,500–£3,000 |
| Multi-day corporate | £3,000–£6,000+ |
Keith Prowse 2027 Open packages will be listed at keithprowse.co.uk when the championship is confirmed. For the 2022 St Andrews Open, packages sold out within weeks of going on general sale, 12+ months before the event. Register an early enquiry through Keith Prowse's corporate enquiries team to be notified when 2027 packages become available.
The resale market
If you miss out in the ballot, there is one safe way to buy a resold ticket: the R&A's own official Ticket Resale Platform. One Club members who won tickets in the ballot, or bought Ticket Plus, can list tickets they no longer need for other One Club members to buy — at face value, with authenticity guaranteed. This is the only resale channel the R&A stands behind.
A few practical notes on resale:
Use the official platform, and nothing else. Tickets also turn up on general secondary sites such as StubHub and on unofficial sellers, often at multiples of face value. Those are not authorised, carry no guarantee that the ticket is genuine, and a ticket flagged as resold outside the official platform can be voided at the gate. If it is not the R&A's own Resale Platform, treat it as a tout.
Watch the ballot and Resale Platform, not the touts. Because official resale is member-to-member at face value, the smart move if you were unsuccessful is to keep checking the Resale Platform as returns come up, rather than paying a premium elsewhere. Free "Kids Go Free" junior tickets cannot be listed for resale.
Avoid cash-only transactions near the venue. Unofficial ticket sellers operate in the vicinity of major championships. This is not a reliable source of genuine tickets, and buying from them funds the touting the R&A's own platform exists to shut out.
If you don't get tickets
The Open Championship at St Andrews is sufficiently well-organised that large sections of the course boundary along the West Sands and the public roads adjacent to the Links are accessible without a ticket. Crowds gather along the West Sands behind the 1st and 18th holes; views of play on the 1st and 18th fairways are partially available from public ground.
This is not a substitute for grounds access — you cannot follow play around the course, and the view from outside the perimeter is limited. But if ballot and resale attempts have all failed and you are in St Andrews during championship week, it is not nothing.
The R&A also operates a large screen area for non-ticket holders in the town during championship weeks.
Timeline for 2027
| Action | When |
|---|---|
| Join One Club + enter the ballot at theopen.com | Before Friday 24 July 2026, when the 155th Open ballot closes — after that, the official Resale Platform is the route |
| Book a bed | Before your ballot result — see below |
| Ballot allocation invitation | Typically ~12 months before |
| Keith Prowse enquiry registration | Now (register for early notification) |
| Practice round allocation | Via same ballot; less oversubscribed |
| Resale market opens | As successful allocations resell (typically 3–6 months before) |
Book the bed before you know about the ticket
This is the ordering most people get wrong, and it is the one that costs money. A ticket you don't end up needing goes back through the R&A's face-value Resale Platform. A St Andrews bed you don't end up needing is usually cancellable. But a St Andrews bed you didn't book cannot be conjured up later at any price. The town is small and its bed stock is fixed; the championship is not. Those two numbers do not reconcile, and the gap is what the accommodation guide below is about.
So the sequence is: enter the ballot, then book something cancellable immediately, then relax. If the ballot goes against you and resale doesn't come through, you cancel the room. If you wait for the result and the result is good, you are booking accommodation into a market that has already been picked over for a year.
Our St Andrews 2027 accommodation guide has the full picture — what exists in the town, what the Dundee, Cupar and East Neuk overflow looks like, which options sit on the Leuchars rail line, and how far ahead each tier of it went in 2022.
All prices and dates are estimates based on previous championships pending R&A confirmation of 2027 details. Verify all current information at theopen.com.
Common questions
When do tickets for The Open 2027 at St Andrews go on sale?
The ticket ballot for The 155th Open closed on Friday 24 July 2026. Tickets are allocated through the R&A's public ballot rather than a fixed on-sale, and successful applicants are drawn at random and notified in waves through August and September — so no result yet is not a no — later waves keep producing winners. Once the waves finish, the R&A's official face-value Ticket Resale Platform for One Club members is the route from here. Demand for a St Andrews Open is the highest on the rota.
How hard is it to get Open Championship tickets?
For St Andrews, very competitive — the ballot is heavily oversubscribed. Your best odds come from registering early, being flexible on which day you attend, and considering practice rounds (Sunday–Wednesday), which are easier to get than the four competition days.
How much do Open Championship tickets cost?
Face value for a competition day is typically in the region of £100+, with practice-round tickets cheaper. Hospitality packages run into the hundreds-to-thousands per person. Beware general resale sites charging multiples of face value — the R&A's official Ticket Resale Platform, where One Club members sell to each other at face value, is the only safe resale route.
What are practice day tickets for The Open?
Practice-round tickets cover the days before the Championship proper (Sunday to Wednesday). They are cheaper and easier to obtain than competition days, ropes are often more relaxed, and you can get closer to players — an underrated way to experience The Open.
Do Open Championship tickets include food?
General grounds (admission) tickets do not include food — you pay for catering inside the grounds, or bring your own where permitted. Only hospitality packages include food and drink as part of the price.
About the author
The Birdie Brae editor
Editor and founder of Birdie Brae. Based in Glasgow, 14.5 handicap, playing since 2022. Has played 40+ Scottish courses and started this site because most Scottish golf content is written by people trying to sell you a package holiday.
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