The ultimate guide to the 155th Open at St Andrews

Eight days in July 2027, the thirty-first Open on the Old Course, and a town of 18,000 people expecting 290,000 guests. Tickets, trains, beds, where to stand and what to do when the golf stops: everything, from the people who live here.

 

Last updated 30 September 2026. This guide is revised every time the R&A, Fife Council or the transport operators confirm something new.

 

The essentials, in one paragraph

The 155th Open Championship is played on the Old Course at St Andrews from Sunday 11 to Sunday 18 July 2027. The first four days are practice days; the championship proper runs Thursday 15 to Sunday 18. It is the thirty-first time The Open has come to St Andrews, more than any other course, and the first since the 150th in 2022, when Cameron Smith shot a closing 64 in front of a record 290,000 spectators. General admission tickets were sold only through a public ballot, which opened on 6 July 2026, closed on 24 July and has been notifying applicants in waves since August; every entrant hears by the end of September. Adult day tickets ran from £40 for the Sunday practice day to £190 for the final round, under-16s go free with an adult, and 16-to-24-year-olds pay half. No spectator cars come into town: you arrive by train to Leuchars and shuttle bus, by park-and-ride, or on foot. Beds in St Andrews itself were largely gone before the ballot opened; Dundee, the East Neuk, Cupar, Perth and Edinburgh are where most people will actually sleep. The rest of this guide takes each of those in turn.

Tickets: what existed, what is left

The ballot was the only route to an ordinary day ticket, and it has closed. If you entered, your answer arrives by email in one of the waves running through September 2026; a successful application brings an invitation to pay, at face value, with a window of up to seven days, and a daily limit of four tickets per person. Miss the window and the allocation returns to the pot. Tickets themselves are digital and are released for download in July 2027, through the R&A’s free One Club membership, which every applicant had to join. If you did not enter, or entered and missed, the honest position is that a general admission ticket is now a matter of luck: in previous Opens an official face-value resale has opened in the spring for holders who cannot attend, and nothing has been announced for 2027 yet. We cover that situation in detail in our piece on what happens after the ballot, and we will update both articles the day the R&A says anything.

What remains is the paid-for tier. Ticket Plus pairs a day ticket with entry to a private area with seating and food and drink to buy; the R&A was describing it as selling fast in September. Hospitality packages include the ticket, premium viewing on the course and inclusive dining, at prices that start well into four figures for a championship day and are sold by enquiry rather than off the shelf. There are ticket-and-camping packages in a camping village a short walk from the course, and official ticket-and-accommodation packages, sold as Destination Packages, that bundle a guaranteed ticket with a bed and transfers and are the sanest option for a group of six or eight arriving from overseas. All of these come through theopen.com or the R&A’s experiences line. What you should not do, whatever the price, is buy from a secondary site: tickets are tied to the One Club account of the person who applied, the R&A cancels those it finds resold, and the gates in Open week are full of people who found this out too late.

Face-value prices, for the record and as the benchmark for everything else: adults £40 (Sunday 11), £50 (Monday), £60 (Tuesday), £70 (Wednesday), £150 (Thursday and Friday), £170 (Saturday) and £190 (Sunday 18). Ages 16 to 24 pay exactly half of each. Under-16s are free but must hold a ticket and be with an adult aged 18 or over. Practice days are not a consolation prize; more on that below.

 

“St Andrews does not host The Open so much as absorb it. The course is the town, and the town is the course.”

Getting here: the week the cars stop

St Andrews has no railway station of its own. The nearest is Leuchars, ten minutes away across the Eden estuary, with direct trains from Edinburgh Waverley in about an hour, from Dundee in twelve minutes, and from Aberdeen, Perth and, via the overnight sleeper from London Euston, from a bed you climbed into the night before. During the championship a shuttle runs from Leuchars to the course, and for anyone staying in Edinburgh or Dundee this is the way to do it: no parking, no queue on the A91, a walk from the drop-off to the gate. Buy train tickets early; the Fife line is busy on an ordinary Saturday, and ScotRail will add capacity but not infinitely. If you are driving, all spectator parking is by park-and-ride from sites on the edges of town with shuttle buses in, exactly as in 2022; the 2027 sites, hours and any pre-booking will be confirmed by the R&A and Fife Council nearer the time and we will add them here the day they are. There is no spectator parking at the course and the roads around the links close to ordinary traffic. Within the town, you walk. Nothing in St Andrews is more than twenty minutes from anything else, and in Open week the walk along the Scores from the cathedral end to the first tee, with the whole town going the same way, is one of the pleasures.

For the London route in particular, read our piece on the overnight train that takes you from London to St Andrews; it is the most civilised way to arrive and, in Open week, possibly the only one with a bed attached.

Where to stay: think in rings

The town has roughly three thousand hotel beds and a university that empties its halls of residence for the week; both were largely spoken for months before the ballot opened, and what is left in St Andrews itself is priced accordingly. This is not a complaint, it is arithmetic. The sensible way to think about it is in rings. The first ring is St Andrews and the villages within a few miles: the Old Course Hotel, Rusacks, Hotel du Vin and Rufflets are the hotels people dream about, and if you are in one of them you already know. The second ring is the East Neuk fishing towns, Crail, Anstruther, Pittenweem and Elie, plus Cupar inland: fifteen to twenty-five minutes by car to a park-and-ride, self-catering houses with parking and more than one bathroom, and somewhere lovely to eat in the evening. The third is Dundee, across the Tay, with a proper choice of hotels, the V&A, and Leuchars twelve minutes down the line; for many spectators it is the best-value base of all. Then Perth, then Edinburgh, which works well if you are coming for two days rather than seven and want a city around the golf.

If you are a group and want a house, the R&A runs an official home-rental scheme through which St Andrews owners let their properties for the week, inspected and with the paperwork done; we have written a full guide to renting a house in St Andrews for The Open 2027, for owners and for visitors. If you are still deciding whether to come at all, our quiet season piece makes the case that the town is at its best, and its cheapest, in the months either side; Open week is many things, but it is not that.

The course, for people who will be standing on it

Watching golf at St Andrews is unlike watching it anywhere else, and it pays to understand why before you arrive. The Old Course goes straight out along the sea for seven holes, turns in a loop at the far end, and comes straight back, and for most of its length the outward and inward holes share the same enormous double greens and the same fairways. The practical consequence is that the course is thin and long, the crowd is spread along its edges, and you can see a great deal from a single spot because groups are passing you in both directions. The loop, holes seven to eleven, is the busiest, most theatrical part of the course in the middle of the day; the stretch along the Eden estuary is where the wind decides things. The Road Hole, the seventeenth, with its drive over the corner of the Old Course Hotel and its green pressed against the wall and the road, is the most famous hole in the championship and the hardest place to find a view; arrive early or accept the screen. And then the eighteenth, the widest fairway in golf, the Swilcan Bridge, the Valley of Sin and the grandstands that turn the last green, with the R&A clubhouse and the town behind it, into an amphitheatre. On the Sunday, you will not walk into that stand at four in the afternoon. Nobody does.

A few things regulars know. The first and eighteenth fairways are shared, so the first tee stand gives you the openers and the finishers. The grandstand behind the second green and the one at the fifth double green are quieter and see plenty. Walking the whole course with a group takes three to four hours, most of it in the wind, and the crowd is most patient at the far end. Big screens are placed around the course and the free official app carries live scoring; between them you can follow a leaderboard from a deckchair at the twelfth. Course maps and spectator guides are published by the R&A in the spring and are worth reading twice.

For the course itself, its history and how an ordinary golfer gets a round on it in any other week, read St Andrews Links: more than the home of golf. For the story of the return, read The Open returns home: St Andrews 2027.

Practice days are the secret

The four practice days, Sunday to Wednesday, are the best value in the championship and, for many people who live here, the best days. The field is on the course in loose groups, playing two balls, chatting, hitting the shots into the Road Hole green three times to see what happens, and stopping to sign things. Ropes are the same but the crowd is a fraction of the weekend’s and you can stand behind the tee at the seventeenth and hear the conversation. In 2022 the Monday of practice week brought the Celebration of Champions, a four-hole exhibition for past winners over the first, second, seventeenth and eighteenth, and the R&A will announce whether something similar marks 2027, which happens to be the centenary of Bobby Jones’s six-shot win here in 1927. A £40 Sunday ticket for an adult, free for the children, on a course where you can walk up to the players, is the day we would choose if we could only have one.

The town during the week

St Andrews in Open week is a different place, and mostly a happier one. The population swells by a factor of four or five, the bars on Market Street and South Street run late, and the whole town moves on foot. Book dinner now, not in July: the restaurants that matter fill weeks ahead and several go to set menus. The Jigger Inn, the whitewashed pub beside the seventeenth fairway, is the nineteenth hole of record and will be queued out the door; 18 at Rusacks, the rooftop above the eighteenth green, sells its Open week tables as a package and they are gone before most people knew they existed. Forgans, on Market Street, is the place for a big table and a plate of something Scottish; the Adamson on South Street for a proper dinner; Little Italy for a room that feels like a secret and will not be; Jannettas for a cone in a queue that is part of the experience. The Spoiled Life, the shop-cum-coffee-bar on the Scores, is where you will drink coffee before the gates open.

There is more than golf. The cathedral ruins and St Rule’s Tower are ten minutes from the eighteenth green; West Sands, where the opening of Chariots of Fire was filmed, runs for two miles north of the course and is where the crowd goes in the evening; the R&A World Golf Museum, beside the eighteenth, is the obvious extra hour. If someone in the party would rather spend a championship day in a robe, Kohler Waters Spa at the Old Course Hotel is on the course itself. And if the weather is kind, the East Neuk villages half an hour along the coast are where St Andrews goes to escape St Andrews.

What to bring, and what not to

Everything you have heard about Scottish weather in July is true simultaneously. Plan for wind first, rain second and sun third, and for all three before lunch. A waterproof with a hood, layers underneath, shoes you can stand in for eight hours on turf and sand, sun cream, a hat that will not blow off, and a refillable bottle. The R&A publishes its bag policy and list of prohibited items in the spring, but expect small bags only, no large cameras on championship days, no ladders or periscopes, and a security check at the gate. Mobile phones are permitted; the app is useful; ringing during a putt will earn you the coldest looks in sport. Cash is largely pointless; the course and the town are card. Bring patience for the Sunday exit, when 60,000 people leave a town with three roads out at the same time.

A little history, because you will be asked

The Open first came to St Andrews in 1873, thirteen years after it began at Prestwick, and was won by a local caddie, Tom Kidd. Since then the Old Course has hosted it thirty times, a list that includes Bobby Jones in 1927, Jack Nicklaus in 1970 and 1978, Seve Ballesteros in 1984, Nick Faldo in 1990, Tiger Woods by eight shots in 2000 and again in 2005, and Cameron Smith in 2022, who came from behind on the Sunday with five birdies in a row from the tenth. The 150th drew 290,000 people over the week, the most of any Open, and generated more than £300 million for Fife and Scotland. The R&A has said it anticipates similar numbers in 2027. Whoever lifts the jug on 18 July will be the fourteenth man to do it at St Andrews since the war, and will know, as they all say, that it counts double here.

 

Know before you go
WHEN	Sunday 11 – Sunday 18 July 2027. Practice days Sun–Wed; championship Thu–Sun.
WHERE	The Old Course, St Andrews Links, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9SF. Gates on the town side and the West Sands side; details in the spring spectator guide.
TICKETS	Ballot only for general admission (closed 24 July 2026; results by end Sept). Adults £40–£190 by day; 16–24 half price; under-16s free with an adult. Ticket Plus, hospitality, camping and Destination Packages via theopen.com. No secondary sites.
GETTING THERE	Train to Leuchars (Edinburgh c. 1 hr, Dundee 12 min) then shuttle; or park-and-ride from sites on the edge of town, confirmed early 2027. No spectator parking at the course. Walk within town.
WHERE TO STAY	St Andrews if you already have it; otherwise the East Neuk, Cupar, Dundee, Perth or Edinburgh. Official home-rental scheme for houses. Book now.
WEATHER	Average July high 18–19°C, wind off the North Sea most days, rain likely at some point every day. Waterproof, layers, sun cream.
UPDATES	This guide is revised as the R&A confirms resale, park-and-ride, bag policy and schedule. Last updated 30 September 2026.