For the first time in 56 years, the PGA Tour will not play a single event in Hawaiʻi. The Tour confirmed in April 2026 that both of its January stops — The Sentry at Kapalua and the Sony Open at Waialae — are off the 2027 schedule. If your January-in-Hawaii picture included tournament golf on TV from a course you could see from your lanai, that era just closed. Here’s what actually happened, and what it changes (and doesn’t) for a winter trip.

Two separate dominoes fell. First, the 2026 edition of The Sentry — the Tour’s traditional season opener, played on Kapalua’s Plantation Course since 1999 — was cancelled outright after turf conditions deteriorated amid West Maui’s ongoing water dispute. Then in June 2026, the Tour and Sentry Insurance made the move permanent: The Sentry relocates to Torrey Pines in San Diego beginning January 2027, with a sponsorship deal running through 2035.

The Sony Open’s exit is quieter but just as final. The January 2026 tournament at Waialae Country Club was the last under Sony’s sponsorship — and the last as a PGA Tour event. ESPN reports both Hawaiʻi events are simply absent from the 2027 calendar. The Tour says it is exploring a future for the Sony Open on the senior PGA Tour Champions circuit, potentially packaged with the Champions tour’s existing January stop at Hualālai on the Big Island — but nothing is confirmed.

Three reasons, stacked. The water and drought problems at Kapalua made the 2026 cancellation unavoidable. The cost of staging tournaments an ocean away from the mainland has been a quiet complaint for years. And the Tour is rebuilding its schedule philosophy — it no longer wants to open its season in early January at all, which is the exact slot Hawaiʻi has owned for more than half a century.

The hit lands hardest on the islands themselves. The Garden Island reports the two events were worth roughly $150 million to the state — tournament operations, visiting fans, and two weeks of prime-time aerial shots of Maui and Oʻahu beamed to mainland viewers in the dead of winter. That last part was free advertising money can’t replace.

If you’re not a golf fan: almost nothing — and one thing in your favor. Tournament week historically tightened lodging around Kapalua and West Maui in the first days of January, right when holiday crowds were already peaking. That pressure is gone.

If you are a golf fan, the calculus shifts. The spectator experience — walking the Plantation Course with the world’s best in January — is over. But the courses never left. Kapalua’s Plantation and Bay courses remain open to public play (premium green fees, book well ahead), and the resort islands are stacked with oceanfront golf that visiting players can actually get on — browse our Big Island golf packages and Kauai golf packages for the standouts. Waialae is the exception: it’s a private club, and the Sony Open was the public’s one window inside the gates each year.

Worth watching: if the Sony Open lands on the PGA Tour Champions schedule alongside the Hualālai event, January 2027 could still offer professional golf in Hawaiʻi — senior tour, smaller scale, but real. Check the official Sony Open site for updates before planning around it.

The tournaments were a bonus, not the reason to come. January’s real headliners are still on the schedule. It’s one of the most active months of humpback whale season, when humpbacks gather in the warm shallows off Maui to mate and calve. You can compare whale watching tours on Viator or browse our Maui whale watching guide.

Then there’s big-wave season on Oʻahu’s North Shore. When winter swells line up, Pipeline and Waimea Bay put on a show no fairway can match. Add Lunar New Year celebrations in Honolulu’s Chinatown and post-holiday rates once the New Year’s crowd clears. Our January visiting guide covers the whole month.

The bottom line: 2027 marks the end of a genuine tradition, and the economic sting for the islands is real. But for travelers, January in Hawaiʻi loses one spectator event and keeps everything else — the whales, the waves, the weather, and every course the pros just gave up the right to monopolize for a week.