CHICAGO - For years, a $100 round of golf in Chicagoland meant something specific. It meant Cog Hill's Dubsdread, The Glen Club, Harborside, a short list of destination courses you saved up for. In 2026, that list has grown crowded. Five clubs crossed the $100 peak-price threshold this year, bringing the total to 24, exactly double the count when we began tracking prices in 2023. Meanwhile, the broader market tells a calmer story: our fourth annual review of peak pricing across more than 200 courses found the average cost of an 18-hole round rising about 4%, a slower climb than last year. The middle of the market caught its breath in 2026. The top kept climbing.
To see the updated list of Chicagoland green fee prices, visit the sortable Chicago Golf Course Price Tracker.
The $100 club doubles
In 2023, 12 clubs in our database charged $100 or more at peak times. That count grew to 16 in 2024 and 19 in 2025. This year it jumped to 24, the largest single-year expansion we've recorded, and exactly double where it started. We count by club here rather than by individual course, since facilities like Arrowhead and Schaumburg operate three interchangeable nines under one roof and one price sheet.
The class of 2026: Winnetka Golf Club ($109), Wilmette Golf Club ($105), Arrowhead in Wheaton ($105), Schaumburg Golf Club ($105), and the 18-hole course at Village Links of Glen Ellyn ($103). Notably, every one of them is a municipal or park district facility. The $100 round has arrived at your local muni.
Here's the interesting detail that makes this year's expansion remarkable: all five newcomers spent 2025 priced at exactly $99. Each one camped just below the triple-digit line last season, perhaps wary of the psychological barrier. In 2026, every one of them crossed it, and mostly in lockstep at $105. Once one operator breaks the seal, the rest apparently feel free to follow.
Existing members deepened their commitment too. Cog Hill's Ravines course moved from $96 to $102, giving that club a second listing over the line alongside Dubsdread. And the next class is already lined up: eight more clubs now sit between $90 and $99, including Klein Creek, Lost Marsh, St. Andrews, and Shepherd's Crook, which is priced at exactly $99 and doing the same dance Winnetka did last year. Check back in twelve months.
Elsewhere, some price restraints
Away from the top of the market, 2026 was a year of relative restraint. Of the 203 courses with complete 2025 and 2026 data, 149 raised prices, 40 held perfectly steady, and 14 cut prices. The average peak cost of an 18-hole round (green fee plus cart) rose from $81 to $85, an increase of about 4%. Another 35 courses raised prices only notionally, with boosts of 3% or less.
That 4% increase is a deceleration from the 5% climb a year earlier. Operators appear to be testing the ceiling more gently now.
And for the bargain hunters, 14 courses cost less to play this year than last. Beyond the bigger cuts covered later in this article, Vernon Hills trimmed 6.1% to $46, Balmoral Woods in Crete and Midlane in Wadsworth each came down 5.8% to $65, and Naperville's Tamarack, Lakewood's Turnberry, and Arlington Heights' Arlington Lakes and Nickol Knoll all shaved a dollar or two off their peak rates. Balmoral Woods is a repeat visitor to this list, having also cut prices in 2025, so value seekers south of the city should take note. Modest as some of these moves are, a price cut of any size in this market counts as a statement.
Fewer places to play
The most consequential story of 2026 may be the courses that are gone from the market entirely. Five closed permanently over the past couple years: Calumet Country Club in Homewood, Fresh Meadow in Hillside, Village Green in Mundelein, White Mountain Golf Park in Tinley Park, and Pistakee Country Club in McHenry. Two more, Maple Meadows in Wood Dale and Orchard Valley in Aurora, are closed for renovations, and Golf Vista Estates in Monee has gone silent. Readers of last year's article will remember Calumet leading our list of price cuts while the property's owner pursued other plans for the land. That price cut turned out to be the final one.
The local contraction mirrors a national one. The National Golf Foundation reported that Americans played a record number of rounds in 2025, topping 500 million for the sixth straight year, on roughly 2,000 fewer courses than existed at the early-2000s peak of Tiger-mania. Today's boom is bigger than Tiger's, and it's being squeezed into fewer tracks. The supply and demand math for Chicagoland golfers is simple: every foursome that used to play a course that no longer exists is now competing for a tee time somewhere else. That pressure supports higher prices across the board, and it helps explain why the $100 club found this year such a comfortable time to expand.
The biggest risers
The Preserve at Oak Meadows in Addison posted the largest increase in our data, a whopping 24.6% jump from $130 to $162. The likely explanation sits eight minutes up the road. Maple Meadows, The Preserve's sister course in the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County system, closed after the 2025 season for a major renovation that runs through 2026. The Preserve uses dynamic pricing (more below on that), so when displaced Maple Meadows regulars funneled onto its tee sheet, the algorithm did what algorithms do.
Mistwood Golf Club in Romeoville took the second spot with a 14.6% increase, from $130 to $149, a confidence move from a club that has spent years investing in its product. A cluster of well-regarded Lake County courses followed: Pine Meadow rose 11.9% to $122 and neighboring Steeple Chase climbed 11.2% to $89, while Water's Edge in Worth jumped 12.5% to $90 on the south side. And Winnetka deserves a second mention beyond its $100 club induction: after reopening from its 19-month renovation at $99 last year, it tacked on another 10.1% to reach $109 with cart.
Notable moves
Ruffled Feathers completed a round trip. Last year it made our list of biggest price cutters, slashing peak fees 13.4% to $110 amid persistent criticism of course conditions. This year management reversed almost exactly, raising prices 12.7% to $124.
Last year's headline act, Bolingbrook Golf Club, hiked prices 37.5% to $165 on the strength of hosting LIV Golf Chicago. This year LIV confirmed there will be no Chicago event in 2026. The tournament left, but tournament pricing stayed, with Bolingbrook's peak fee holding at $164. Once a course discovers what the market will bear, it rarely volunteers to un-discover it.
At the very top, last year's premium-tier stability broke. Cog Hill's Dubsdread jumped 10.3% to $225 and now stands alone as the region's most expensive public tee time, while the three Cantigny courses rose 6.7% to $160 and The Glen Club stayed put at $220. Other premium facilities went the opposite way. Prairie Landing made the biggest genuine cut in our data, dropping 13% from $138 to $120, a rare gift to golfers in this market. Both courses at Harborside International trimmed 2.8% to $137, and White Deer Run came down 4% to $120. For golfers willing to shop around, the $120 to $140 range suddenly contains some very good golf.
The quiet cart fee increase
Green fees get the headlines, but cart fees did some lifting in 2026 too. Of the 128 courses in our data that charge separately for carts, 41 raised the cart fee this year. Water's Edge went from $20 to $25, Winnetka from $20 to $24, and Cog Hill's three sister courses from $20 to $23 apiece.
Raising the cart fee is a lower-visibility way to raise the price of a round, since most golfers anchor on the advertised green fee. It also continues a trend we flagged last year, when Illinois's 8.5% sales tax on cart rentals took effect and courses varied widely in how they passed the cost along. Our methodology uses the total cost of green fee plus cart precisely to catch this kind of thing.
Dynamic pricing, still the wild card
Our annual caveat returns, and it grows more relevant every year. Many courses, including Winnetka, Harborside, Mistwood, Bolingbrook, Pine Meadow, and The Preserve now price tee times the way airlines price seats. The cost of a Saturday morning round varies with the day, the hour, demand, the weather, and how far in advance you book. Once you book, your rate locks in, but two golfers in the same foursome may have paid meaningfully different amounts for the privilege.
This makes clean comparisons genuinely difficult, for golfers and for us. Our approach is to capture true peak pricing: the highest non-holiday price we can find at each course, which almost always means a Saturday morning tee time booked a few days out. Luckily, discounts can be had. As always, the best values live early and midweek in off-peak hours, and twilight golf remains your friend.
Looking ahead
The 2026 data describes a market settling into a new rhythm. Most operators are content with increases in the low single digits. The dramatic moves now come from specific, explainable circumstances: a sister course closing, a renovation premium, a discount experiment ending, or a premium course recalibrating.
The two trends to watch are working in the same direction. Supply keeps shrinking, while the $100 threshold keeps losing its power to intimidate. Eight clubs currently sit between $90 and $99, and if history is a guide, several of them will join the club next season. For now, enjoy the breather in the middle of the market, and maybe book that Prairie Landing tee time while the sale lasts.
Methodology note
This is our fourth year of pricing data collection across the 211 Chicago-area courses in the GolfScout database, 203 of which had comparable data for both 2025 and 2026. Prices reflect the highest non-holiday peak rate we could find at each course, typically Saturday morning, and represent the total cost of a round: the green fee plus the cart fee where a cart is charged separately. For the $100 club analysis, multi-course facilities such as Arrowhead and Schaumburg are counted once per club, since their courses share a single price sheet. Average price figures cover 18-hole golf only: 9-hole courses are excluded, 27-hole facilities with combined nines are counted once, and each year's average is a snapshot of the courses with pricing that year. Jackson Park's 28% price decrease was excluded from our biggest-movers analysis, since the course is operating as 9 holes during its ongoing renovation.
For a complete list of Chicago-area public course green fees, visit the sortable Golf Course Price Tracker.
