With the 2025 PGA Tour regular season officially in the books, the page has turned to the FedEx Cup Playoffs. While this postseason may have similarities to those in recent memory, the 2025 FedEx Cup Playoffs will be the first contested under a new format once the Tour Championship begins in two weeks.
The postseason has more to serve up than just massive paydays (which it still does, by the way). The FedEx Cup bonus pool remains at $100 million for the playoffs; it will reward those players high in the FedEx Cup standings following the FedEx St. Jude Championship, BMW Championship, and of course, the Tour Championship where the winner will receive $10 million.
Qualifying to East Lake remains a feature in a successful season, but advancing to the BMW Championship remains a key to unlocking one’s full playing schedule for the following year. All those who play themselves into the second round of the playoffs will be able to play in all eight signature events in 2026 and — more or less — be able to pick and choose their playing schedules.
This week at the St. Jude Championship, only the top 70 competitors are competing. (Actually, only 69 of those 70 are in the field given Rory McIlroy chose not to play for myriad reasons.) Those involved are competing not only for a ton of money but qualification for the BMW Championship and signature events in the 2026 PGA Tour season.
Let’s take a closer look at where everything stands with the St. Jude Championship underway at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee.
2025 FedEx Cup Playoffs schedule
FedEx St. Jude Championship
Aug. 7-10
Memphis, Tenn.
TPC Southwind
70
BMW Championship
Aug. 14-17
Owings Mills, Md.
Caves Valley
50
Tour Championship
Aug. 21-24
Atlanta, Ga.
East Lake Golf Club
30
The top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings, via points accumulated throughout the year, are playing in the St. Jude Championship this week (outside of Rory McIlroy, who has chosen to skip the event).
All three events are 72-hole, stroke-play tournaments, though the fields gradually get smaller as the playoffs roll on. The points change, too; everything is quadrupled. During regular-season events, most winners receive 500 FedEx Cup points for finishing first at tournaments (in a handful of events, 600 points go to first place). The winners of the first two FedEx Cup Playoffs events will instead receive 2,000 points each. The point boost goes for every slot on the leaderboard: 300 for second becomes 1,200 and so on.
Only eight golfers surpassed the 2,000-point total during the entire regular season: Scottie Scheffler, McIlroy, Sepp Straka, Russell Henley, Justin Thomas, Ben Griffin, Harris English and J.J. Spaun. Scheffler has just over a 2,200-point lead on third-place Straka, while McIlroy trails him by just under 1,400 points.
The top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings after the St. Jude Championship move on to the BMW Championship. Then the top 30 after that move on to the Tour Championship.
2025 FedEx Cup standings
Despite missing the entire month of January due to injury, Scheffler enters the playoffs as the clear-cut No. 1 in the FedEx Cup standings. Even if he finishes in dead last at the St. Jude Championship, Scheffler will enter the BMW Championship in the top spot given McIlroy’s absence from the St. Jude Championship as no one else will be able to catch him.
Those two players have created a pretty solid moat around themselves, and with the change to the Tour Championship, they are only truly playing for money and bragging rights at this stage with their positioning secure. The same goes for most of the top 10, but things do tighten the closer one looks to the top-30 bubble as less than 300 points separate Cameron Young (No. 16) and Daniel Berger (No. 30).
Here’s a look at the top 30 in the standings entering the postseason.
1
Scottie Scheffler (4,806)
16
Cameron Young (1,464)
2
Rory McIlroy (3,444)
17
Shane Lowry (1,438)
3
Sepp Straka (2,595)
18
Nick Taylor (1,438)
4
Russell Henley (2,391)
19
Collin Morikawa (1,427)
5
Justin Thomas (2,280)
20
Brian Harman (1,413)
6
Ben Griffin (2,275)
21
Hideki Matsuyama (1,309)
7
Harris English (2,232)
22
Chris Gotterup (1,306)
8
J.J. Spaun (2,144)
23
Patrick Cantlay (1,275)
9
Tommy Fleetwood (1,783)
24
Sam Burns (1,266)10Keegan Bradley (1,749)25Justin Rose (1,220)
11
Maverick McNealy (1,672)
26
Viktor Hovland (1,210)12Andrew Novak (1,625)27Lucas Glover (1,191)13Corey Conners (1,620)28Sam Stevens (1,182)14Ludvig Åberg (1,559)29Sungjae Im (1,172)15Robert MacIntyre (1,488)30Daniel Berger (1,167)
2025 Tour Championship format
Say goodbye to the staggered start format. The PGA Tour announced in May that it would be doing away with the handicapped iteration of the Tour Championship, which had been the playing format beginning in 2019. In this format, the player who was ranked No. 1 in the FedEx Cup standings started the week at 10 under and with a two-stroke lead over his nearest competitor and so forth down the leaderboard.
This year, the PGA Tour will allow every player who qualifies for the Tour Championship to begin at ground zero. All 30 players start the tournament at even par and all 30 players will have the same opportunity to lay their claim to the season-long crown. In essence, the Tour Championship is a normal tournament with abnormal stakes.
The format does take away a little bit of the excitement from the first two postseason events as finishing No. 11 means the same as finish No. 25 without starting strokes, but it is made up for with the level playing field at East Lake.
2025 FedEx Cup Playoffs purse, prize money
2025 St. Jude Championship purse, prize money
- 1st: $3.6 million
- 2nd: $2.2 million
- 3rd: $1.4 million
- 4th: $960,000
- 5th: $800,000
- 6th: $720,000
- 7th: $670,000
- 8th: $620,000
- 9th: $580,000
- 10th: $540,000
2025 BMW Championship purse, prize money
- 1st: $3.6 million
- 2nd: $2.2 million
- 3rd: $1.4 million
- 4th: $990,000
- 5th: $830,000
- 6th: $750,000
- 7th: $695,000
- 8th: $640,000
- 9th: $600,000
- 10th: $560,000
2025 Tour Championship purse, prize money
The figures are startling, but not quite as startling for the finale as they have been in previous years given the change in the playing format and the payout structure of the FedEx Cup bonus pool. Here’s a look at what the lucrative top 10 will look like at the Tour Championship.
- 1st: $10 million
- 2nd: $5 million
- 3rd: $3.705 million
- 4th: $3.2 million
- 5th: $2.75 million
- 6th: $1.9 million
- 7th: $1.4 million
- 8th: $1.065 million
- 9th: $900,000
- 10th $735,000
Last year, Scheffler won the FedEx Cup over Collin Morikawa and took home the $25 million grand prize. The $10 million represents a $15 million decrease from a season ago, but the bonus payouts throughout the postseason make up for it as the player ranked first in the FedEx Cup standings following the Wyndham Championship ($10 million) and BMW Championship ($5 million) receives the difference in that figure.
