The tour is one of the six leading men's tours which before 2009 made up the membership of the
International Federation of PGA Tours, but it offers much less prize money than some of the leading tours, and leading Southern African golfers traditionally prefer to play on the
PGA Tour or the
European Tour if they can qualify to do so, typically returning to play in Sunshine Tour events a couple of times a year. Most of the tour's leading official money events, including the
South African Open, are co-sanctioned with the European Tour to attract stronger fields. The 2015 season included 27 official money events. The co-sanctioned events had purses ranging from to , while the other 21 events had purses designated in
South African Rand and ranging from 650,000 rand to 4.5 million rand. There was at least one tournament every month of the year except July, but the main events took place in the South African summer from November to February. In accordance with the
apartheid policy of the governments of Southern Africa, the tour was only open to
White players for its first 20 years. The tour has been open to non-White players since 1991. Five
black golfers have won events: South Africa's
John Mashego at the 1991 Bushveld Classic; South Africa's
Lindani Ndwandwe at the 2001 Western Cape Classic and 2009
Highveld Classic; Zimbabwe's
Tongoona Charamba at the 2006 SAA Pro-Am Invitational and 2008
MTC Namibia PGA Championship; Zambia's
Madalitso Muthiya at the 2016
Vodacom Origins of Golf (Wild Coast); and South Africa's Toto Thimba Jr. at the 2019
KCB Karen Masters. In 2016, the Sunshine Tour announced an affiliation with the
MENA Golf Tour, allowing the top five MENA Tour players Sunshine Tour cards and those 6th-15th into the final stage of Q School. A number of events would also be co-sanctioned among the Sunshine Tour, MENA Tour, and developmental
Big Easy Tour. In May 2022, it was announced that the Order of Merit would be reformatted for the
2022–23 season. It was sponsored by Luno, a cryptocurrency platform. The rankings changed to a points-based system, rather than being decided on money earned. Points earned are based on tournament prize money which are split into five tiers. The leader of the OoM will receive ; paid in
Bitcoin. Since 2022, the top three players on the Order of Merit at the end of the season earn status to play on the
European Tour for the following season. ==Schedule==