The tournament began as the PBA Touring Players Championship in 1983 and ran every
PBA Tour season through 2000. PBA Hall of Famer
Steve Cook won the inaugural event. There were no Players Championship events under any name from 2001 to 2010. After the tournament returned to major status in the
2016 season, the PBA voted to retroactively award major titles to the winners of the three previous Players Championship events that decade (2011, 2013, 2015), stating the tournament "is a members-only event, and includes all of the elements of a major." When
Graham Fach won the 2016 PBA Players Championship, he became the first
Canadian player to win a major, as well as the first Canadian to win PBA Tour title of any kind. Through 2020, the tournament included a maximum starting field of 92 PBA players. The top PBA members in earnings from the previous season had entry priority over the general membership, and could fill up to 82 spots. The remaining 10 spots in the starting field were filled from a ten-game pre-tournament qualifier (PTQ). The tournament format has changed over the years. The format through 2020 included 42 games of qualifying: three rounds of six games each to determine the top 24 for match play, followed by three match play rounds of eight games each. All pins from the initial 18 games carry over into the match play round, with the match play rounds adding 30 bonus pins per victory to the total pinfall in the round. The field was then cut to the top five for the televised stepladder finals. There is no set oil pattern. The 2018 Players Championship used the 44-foot
Carmen Salvino oil pattern, while the 2019 event used the 45-foot Dragon pattern. The 2020 event featured the 38-foot
Wayne Webb oil pattern, named after the PBA Hall of Famer whose bowling center in
Columbus, Ohio hosted this tournament from 2016 through 2020. The 2023 event featured a dual oil pattern, with the 45-foot
Dick Weber pattern on the left lane and the 39-foot
Don Carter pattern on the right lane.
Revamp in 2021 The PBA announced a revamped Players Championship for the
2021 season that opened up the event to the broader PBA membership. Five Regional events were hosted first. After 28 qualifying games (7 games on each of four oil patterns), each Region held its own stepladder finals broadcast. The five Regional winners then competed in the televised tournament finals. The five finals participants bowled a three-game set the day before the broadcast to determine seeding for the stepladder. The Regional concept was introduced, in part, due to travel restrictions that resulted from the
COVID-19 pandemic, and allowed most PBA professionals to compete in safe events closer to home. The 2021 PBA Players Championship featured a $1 million prize fund, with a PBA record-tying $250,000 first place prize. The semifinals on May 13 also used the race to two points format, while the final head-to-head match on May 14 was a best-three-of-five format. The Players Championship was the only 2023 PBA major that did not use a stepladder final round. The standard stepladder finals returned for the 2024 and 2025 PBA Players Championships. In 2026, 96 players (after PTQ participants added) bowled 24 games of qualifying (12 games each on the Viper 37 and Badger 50 oil patterns) to determine the cut to the 32-player Advancer's Round, where they bowled 6 more games on a dual pattern (Badger left lane, Viper right lane) to determine the cut to the 16-player Match Play Round. 16 more round-robin match play games on the dual pattern determined the top 5 for the televised finals. ==PBA Players Championship winners==