Germany’s only DP World Tour stop is back for its 37th edition, and the purse tells you where the tournament’s ambitions lie. The 2026 BMW International Open will carry a $2.75 million prize fund when it tees off July 2-5 at Golfclub München Eichenried. That’s up from $2.5 million just two years ago and a far cry from the roughly €275,000 David Feherty collected when he won the inaugural event in 1989.
Three German headliners anchor the early commitment list: Stephan Jäger, Martin Kaymer, and Matti Schmid. Kaymer won this tournament back in 2008, well before his two major championships. Jäger has quietly become one of the more consistent players on the PGA Tour, and Schmid represents the next generation.
Together, they give the home crowd something it rarely gets — legitimate German contenders on their own turf.
They won’t be alone. Patrick Reed and Sergio García, both regular visitors to Eichenried, are expected to return. Carlos Ortiz, a PGA Tour winner, and Bernd Wiesberger, once the youngest DP World Tour champion, round out the early marquee names. Defending champion Daniel Brown, the Englishman who took the title in 2025, will also be in the field.
The course has changed a lot since Kurt Rossknecht designed the original 18-hole championship layout in 1989. An expansion to 27 holes in 2002 gave the club three interchangeable nine-hole loops, all returning to the clubhouse. But during tournament week, the facility reverts to its so-called “Old Course” routing — a configuration the pros get that members rarely see.
That routing includes the 17th, a par-3 over water nicknamed the “Dornröschenloch” — Sleeping Beauty’s hole — which sits dormant most of the year. During the BMW International Open, it hosts a hole-in-one contest with a BMW on the line. The greens were renovated in 2019 and are now considered among the best in the country.
Fairways have been lengthened, bunkers repositioned. At 7,354 yards and par 72, this is no museum piece.
BMW is pushing ticket sales early. A ten percent discount on general admission and VIP packages runs through Christmas Eve. There’s also a new after-work ticket, aimed at pulling in the Munich commuter crowd for late-afternoon rounds.
The Wednesday Pro-Am remains free. For those who can’t make it, MagentaSport will broadcast the event, though television times haven’t been announced.
The prize money trajectory tells a story of its own. The purse sat flat at €2 million for over a decade, from 2005 through 2019. Then it dropped to €1.5 million in 2021 during the pandemic recovery.
Since then, it has climbed aggressively — €2 million, then $2.5 million, now $2.75 million. The switch to U.S. dollars reflects the DP World Tour’s increasing alignment with PGA Tour economics.
For a tournament that once paid Paul Azinger just over €400,000 to win, and where John Daly showed up in 2001 to claim a check from a purse worth less than €1.9 million, the growth is real. Whether it’s enough to keep the BMW International Open relevant as the game’s money and power consolidate elsewhere is the question Eichenried answers every July.
The 37th edition will be another test. The names are solid, the course is sharper than ever, and the checkbook is open wider than it’s been. Now it just needs four days of golf worthy of the investment.
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