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Welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2026 ranking of the top 25 modern golf courses in Canada. Golfweek for many years ranked Canadian courses, but during COVID there wasn’t much movement on the lists of best modern and classic courses in the country, so the rankings were paused. Now we’re bringing them back.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses around the world, and their individual ratings on a 10-point basis are averaged to produce these rankings. The top handful of courses in the world have an average rating of above 9, while many excellent layouts fall into the high-6 to the 8 range. about how we rate courses.
This ranking list focuses only on modern courses, with 1960 as a break point between modern and classic courses. Why 1960? As noted in our rater's handbook that guides these rankings, design and construction techniques for courses shifted fundamentally after 1960. Mechanized earth-moving became the norm. Most courses required extensive planning, documentation and meticulous excavation. While the advent of new, high-performance grasses meant better conditions, the quicker putting speeds meant greens could not be built with the same dramatic slopes as with many classic courses built before 1960. The skills required to build a great course became those of professionally trained landscape architects, not just creative golf visionaries. The industry had changed dramatically.
With all that in mind, keep scrolling to see our ranking of top modern courses in Canada. Included with each is the average rating, location, designer, year opened and the type of course it is, be that private or with public access in some form.
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