Golf in the UK is having its best run in a generation. More than one in four adults in England played some form of golf in the last year [1], rounds played across Great Britain hit a record in 2025 [2], and club membership is at its highest point in at least 13 years [3]. If you run a club, a driving range, a simulator studio or a golf brand, this is the moment the market has been waiting for.
We love this story because it’s an outdoors story. Golf got people out of the house during lockdown and, unlike a lot of lockdown habits, they stayed. The game then did something clever: it stopped insisting that golf only happens on an 18 hole course. Ranges, simulators, adventure golf, a Thursday night at Pitch, a pair of Manors trousers worn nowhere near a fairway. All of it counts, and all of it is pulling new people in.
This post pulls the UK golf trends for 2026 and 2027 together in one place, looks at the brands and venues doing the pulling, and ends with what it means if you’re the one doing the marketing.
The numbers: golf has never had more people playing it
Rounds played hit a record in 2025
Sporting Insights has tracked rounds played at commercial courses across Great Britain since 2005, and 2025 was the biggest year on record [2]. Rounds were up 14% on 2024, 11% on 2023, 14% on 2022 and 21% on 2021, and every region of the country beat each of the previous four years. Q2 (April to June) was the single best quarter ever recorded.
Yes, 2025 was warmer and sunnier than average. But as Sporting Insights point out, the weather doesn’t explain double digit growth against every post pandemic year. People aren’t just playing because the sun came out. They’re playing because they’ve made golf part of their week.
Club membership is at a 13 year high
England Golf’s 2025 figures show 750,071 club members in England, up 2.66% on the 730,602 recorded in 2024 and up more than 100,000 since 2021 [3]. That’s the highest membership number in at least 13 years, reversing a decline that ran all the way back to the 2008 financial crisis.
The standout is juniors. Junior club membership jumped from 46,028 to 61,483 in a single year, a rise of 34% [3]. England Golf’s iGolf scheme for independent golfers grew another 34% to 72,921 users, and junior iGolf engagement was up 487% [3]. The next generation isn’t waiting for a membership to start keeping a handicap.
Clubs are feeling it. The Hillier Hopkins 2024/25 survey of UK golf clubs found 48% of members’ clubs now have a waiting list, up from 46% the year before, and 75% reported membership growth [4]. Proprietary clubs reporting growth jumped from 65% to 78% [4].
More than one in four adults played golf last year
The biggest number of all comes from England Golf’s July 2026 participation figures: 12.6 million adults in England played some form of golf in the previous 12 months [1]. Within that, 7.3 million played on a 9 or 18 hole course, 5.3 million played an off course format such as a driving range, simulator or adventure golf, and 9.4 million played crazy or mini golf (the categories overlap, as plenty of people do more than one) [1].
The retention numbers are the part clubs and brands should really notice. 98% of recreational golfers and 96% of leisure golfers say they expect to keep playing, and 59% of recreational players want to play more often [1]. This isn’t a spike. It’s a base.
Off course golf is where the new players come from
The 5.3 million adults playing off course golf [1] are the reason the sport’s front door has got wider. You don’t need a handicap, a dress code or four spare hours. You need a bay, a screen and a couple of mates.
Pitch is the clearest UK example. From two London clubs, in the City and Soho, by July 2024 it was announcing Canary Wharf, Dublin, Manchester and Birmingham in one go [5]. Its women’s beginner academy with Adidas had over 1,000 applicants for 100 free places [5]. In September 2026 it signed a franchise deal to open at least seven venues in the US over five years, starting in California in early 2027 [6]. A London indoor golf concept is now exporting itself.
Toptracer, the ball tracing tech behind the modern driving range, is a good measure of the trend at range level. It now runs at more than 1,450 sites across 38 countries, logged 45 million hours of play in 2025, and reported a 29% increase in range installations in the first half of 2026 [7]. Toptracer says operators see at least a 50% revenue increase in year one, which is a company claim rather than independent data, but it explains why so many ranges are upgrading [7].
For marketers the point is simple. Off course venues are competing with bowling, darts bars and cinemas for a Friday night, not with the members’ club down the road. That’s a different audience, a different message and a different set of channels, and it rewards brands that can make golf look like a night out rather than a tradition.
The brands rewriting what golf looks like
Manors
Manors Golf was founded in London in 2019 by Jojo Regan, Luke Davies and Nick Watts, because they couldn’t find pro shop clothing they actually wanted to wear [8]. Six years on it has grown at 100% year on year for three years running, hit its first EBITDA positive year in 2025, and raised £3 million in 2026 led by Redrice Ventures, with Andy Murray, Ant and Dec, Theo Walcott and Nicholas Hoult among the investors [8][9]. The UK is still over half of sales, the US is around 40% and rising [9].
What makes Manors interesting to us isn’t the clothes, it’s the model. Around 25% of the company’s revenue now comes from content and brand experiences rather than product [10]. Its spring 2025 trip to Verdura in Sicily took about 50 people, produced over 200 pieces of content and reached more than 1.5 million people through its own channels with no paid spend, and brands including the PGA Tour, The R&A, Stanley, BMW and INEOS pay to be part of that world [10]. Manors is a media company that happens to sell trousers, and its Reebok collaboration “The United Kingdom of Golf”, narrated by Sam Torrance and shot entirely in camera, is a lesson in treating British golf culture as something worth filming [8].
The wider wave
Manors isn’t alone. Malbon, Eastside Golf, Metalwood and a long tail of streetwear influenced labels have made golf clothing something people wear on purpose, and collaborations like Manors x Reebok and Malbon x Nike show the big sportswear houses have noticed [11]. The common thread is that none of them lead with performance fabric. They lead with story, place and people, which is exactly the kind of content the new 12.6 million are consuming before they ever book a tee time.
If you want the short version of how these brands market: they shoot a lot, they shoot well, and they make the game look like somewhere you’d want to be.
To summerise:
What it means for clubs, venues and brands
If you run a club. A waiting list is not a marketing strategy. The clubs growing fastest are using this moment to lift their joining fees (the members’ club average is now £1,830 [4]), bring the average age down and build a junior pipeline that keeps the list full for a decade. That takes a brand people want to belong to, which means proper photography, a website that doesn’t look like 2009, and video that shows the place on a summer evening rather than an empty car park.
If you run a range or simulator studio. Your competition is the rest of the night out. Social first video, bookable packages, Google Ads on “things to do” terms as much as golf terms, and a steady stream of content from the bays. We built the website for Forged Golf Sims and the brief was exactly that: make indoor golf look like a night people would choose.
If you’re a golf brand. Manors has shown that the content is the product. Shoot a trip, a tournament, a club night, and sell what surrounds it. The brands winning the new audience are the ones that can produce film and photography at a level that makes golf look like culture.
Floom Creative is a golf marketing agency in London. We shoot golf video and photography, run Google and Meta ads for clubs, ranges and brands, and build the websites that turn interest into bookings. If the numbers above describe your market, we’d love to talk about how to make the most of it.
References
- The Golf Business, “More than one in four adults in England played golf in the last 12 months”, 27 July 2026. https://thegolfbusiness.co.uk/2026/07/more-than-one-in-four-adults-in-england-played-golf-in-the-last-12-months/
- Sporting Insights, “2025 sets new record for rounds played”, 12 February 2026. https://www.sportinginsights.com/2025-sets-new-record-for-rounds-played/
- Golf Business News, “England Golf reports major rise in club membership”, 18 March 2026. https://golfbusinessnews.com/news/growing-the-game/england-golf-reports-major-rise-in-club-membership/
- Hillier Hopkins, Members’ and Proprietary Golf Clubs’ Survey 2024/25. https://hillierhopkins.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Hillier-Hopkins-Golf-Clubs-Report-2024-25.pdf
- Golf Business News, “Pitch tees up four new venues in UK & Ireland”, 4 July 2024. https://golfbusinessnews.com/news/corporate/pitch-unveils-major-expansion-plans-in-uk-ireland/
- Golf Business News, “PITCH signs agreement to open multiple sites in the US”, 16 September 2026. https://golfbusinessnews.com/news/corporate/pitch-signs-agreement-to-open-multiple-sites-in-the-us/
- Topgolf Callaway Brands, “Toptracer Growth Accelerates Ahead of The Open at Royal Birkdale”, 30 July 2026. https://press.topgolf.com/2026-07-30-Toptracer-Growth-Accelerates-Ahead-of-The-Open-at-Royal-Birkdale
- Golfshake, “How Manors Golf has transformed the world of golf clothing”, 27 August 2026. https://www.golfshake.com/news/view/23068/How_Manors_Golf_has_transformed_the_world_of_golf_clothing.html
- Today’s Golfer, “Andy Murray invests in Manors Golf as brand raises £3m”, 2026. https://www.todays-golfer.com/news-and-events/equipment-news/andy-murray-among-celebrity-investors-in-manors-golf/
- Dot Dot Dot, “Manors Disrupted Golf. Brands Came Calling.”, 15 May 2025. https://dotdottdottt.substack.com/p/manors-disruptor-brand-golf-a-sign
- Three Putt Golf Clothing, “Top 7 Golf Streetwear Brands Redefining the Game in 2026”. https://threeputtgolfclothing.co.uk/blogs/news/golf-streetwear-brands
