How Many Golf Courses Are There in the UK?

The UK had 3,101 golf courses across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, according to the last cross-nation count from The R&A’s Golf Around the World report — based on National Golf Foundation facility data as of year-end 2020. England accounts for the great majority of that total (2,213 courses), followed by Scotland (594), Wales (181) and Northern Ireland (113). One important caveat before anything else: governing bodies and researchers don’t always count the same thing. A “course” and a “club” are not interchangeable — some clubs operate two or more courses — and the numbers below reflect that distinction throughout.

This is the UK-wide answer to a question our regional guides can only answer for one nation at a time.

Golf courses by UK nation

The R&A figures are the only set that uses one consistent method across all four nations, which is why they anchor the table above. Where a nation’s own governing body publishes a more recent, checkable club count, we’ve added it as a second row rather than mixing the two measures into one number.

England

England is by a wide margin the largest golfing nation in the UK, both in area and in course count. The R&A’s Golf Around the World report counted 2,213 golf courses in England as of year-end 2020 — more than the other three home nations combined.

England Golf, the sport’s governing body, frames its own reach differently: it says it represents more than 1,900 affiliated golf clubs — a club count rather than a course count, and a 2024 snapshot rather than a 2020 one, so the two figures aren’t strictly comparable. A National Club Golfer article citing a more recent R&A report (May 2025) put England at 2,423 courses, with 1,735 clubs affiliated to England Golf specifically. Together, these figures suggest England’s course count has grown somewhat since the 2020 snapshot, even if no single updated UK-wide total has been published to match it.

Whatever the exact figure, England’s golf is defined as much by its variety as its scale: Lancashire’s championship links, Surrey and Berkshire’s heathland, Yorkshire’s moorland, and a dense network of parkland and municipal courses in between. Explore our full England golf courses guide or browse every course we list in England.

Scotland

Scotland is the birthplace of golf, and it remains the most golf-dense nation in the UK relative to its population. The R&A counted 594 golf courses in Scotland as of year-end 2020. Scottish Golf, the governing body, gave a slightly different figure in December 2021: 568 affiliated golf clubs, confirmed publicly by its own leadership and reported by The Golf Business.

The gap between 594 courses and 568 clubs is the clubs-versus-courses distinction this article keeps coming back to — a small number of Scottish clubs run more than one course. Either way, for a population of roughly 5.5 million, that works out to somewhere around one course for every 9,000 to 10,000 people, a concentration few other countries can match.

Read our full Scotland golf courses guide or browse every course we list in Scotland.

Wales

Wales is the smallest of the three mainland home nations by course count. The R&A’s Golf Around the World report counted 181 golf courses in Wales as of year-end 2020, a figure that spans everything from Royal Porthcawl’s championship links to small nine-hole village courses in the valleys.

Unlike England and Scotland, we could not find a current, independently checkable affiliated-club count published directly by Wales Golf, the sport’s governing body, at the time of writing. Other coverage of Welsh golf quotes club totals in the 140–200 range, but none of it traced back to a source we could verify directly, so we’ve left that figure out rather than repeat an unconfirmed number. The R&A course count above is the most reliable figure available.

Read our full Wales golf courses guide or browse every course we list in Wales.

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is the smallest of the four home nations by course count, but it punches well above its weight in prestige — Royal Portrush hosted the Open Championship in 2019 and again in 2025, and Royal County Down is regularly ranked among the best courses in the world.

Golf in Northern Ireland is governed island-wide by Golf Ireland, formed in 2021 from the merger of the Golfing Union of Ireland and the Irish Ladies Golf Union. Golf Ireland reports affiliated membership for the island of Ireland as a whole — 236,384 by the end of October 2025 — but does not publish a separate club or course count for its Ulster branch’s six Northern Ireland counties (Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone) in any source we could locate. Absent a governing-body figure specific to Northern Ireland, the most reliable number available is the R&A’s course count: 113 golf courses as of year-end 2020.

Our guide to golf in Northern Ireland covers the courses in more depth, and our guide to golf in Ireland sets them in the context of the whole island.

Why the numbers differ

Ask “how many golf courses are there in the UK” and you’ll find figures ranging from under 3,000 to well over 3,500, often within the same year. A few genuine reasons explain most of that spread.

Clubs are not the same as courses. A golf club is a membership organisation; a golf course is a physical facility. Most clubs run exactly one course, but some — particularly larger resorts and a handful of historic clubs — operate two, three or more courses under one club name. A count based on “affiliated clubs” will therefore usually sit below a count based on physical courses.

Nine-hole courses complicate the count. Some published totals count every distinct nine- or eighteen-hole layout as a separate course; others count a facility with two nine-hole loops as one course.

Governing bodies count only their own affiliated members. England Golf’s 1,900+ figure, Scottish Golf’s 568 figure and Golf Ireland’s island-wide membership figure all describe clubs affiliated to that specific body. Independent pay-and-play courses, some hotel and resort courses, and clubs that have lapsed their affiliation can sit outside those totals even though they are open for play.

Course counts change over time. Closures, particularly among municipal and smaller nine-hole facilities, have been a steady feature of UK golf since the 2008 financial crisis, and new courses have opened too. A count from 2020 will not perfectly match a count taken today, and we haven’t found a single source that tracks that net change across all four nations.

None of this means the figures are unreliable — it means “how many golf courses” has more than one honest answer, depending on exactly what you’re counting. We’ve kept clubs and courses clearly separated throughout this article for that reason.

How many are listed on GeoGolf Course

The figures above come from national governing bodies and the R&A. Separately, here’s how many courses are currently listed in our own directory — a smaller, more conservative number than the national totals, because we only list courses we’ve been able to confirm are open and add contact and course details for individually, rather than every course a governing body or facility database might count.

We don’t yet have a dedicated Northern Ireland region in the directory, which is why it isn’t in the table above — our Northern Ireland golf guide covers the courses in narrative form instead. Across all regions we track, including the Isle of Wight and a small number of offshore and other listings, GeoGolf Course currently lists 958 golf courses in total.

If you’re looking for accessible, affordable golf rather than a governing-body statistic, our guide to municipal golf courses in the UK covers council-run and pay-and-play courses specifically, many of which sit outside the national club-affiliation figures discussed above.

Sources

• The R&A, Golf Around the World – 2021 (Fourth Edition), National Golf Foundation facility data as of year-end 2020: PDF report
• England Golf — englandgolf.org, cited for “more than 1,900 affiliated golf clubs” (2024)
• National Club Golfer, How many golf clubs are there in England? (May 2025), citing a more recent R&A report: nationalclubgolfer.com
• The Golf Business, Membership of Scottish golf clubs jumps above 200,000 (December 2021), quoting Scottish Golf on 568 affiliated clubs: thegolfbusiness.co.uk
• Golf Ireland, island-wide affiliated membership reported at 236,384 (end of October 2025), via The Golf Business: thegolfbusiness.co.uk
• GeoGolf Course directory counts: internal database, 5 September 2026

Figures above reflect the most recent checkable data we could confirm for each nation as of September 2026. Where a governing body has not published an easily verifiable current figure, we have said so rather than estimate.