Four new tournaments, two upgraded events, two new courses and two significant date changes are among the highlights of the 2006 European Tour schedule.

The 2006 season actually began last week with the inaugural HSBC Champions in Shanghai, China, and continues in Asia with the Volvo China Open and the UBS Hong Kong Open over the next few weeks before moving to South Africa to contest the Dunhill Championship and the South African Airways Open before the end of the 2005 calendar year.

Calendar year 2006 will open with the Royal Trophy, a new team contest between Europe and Asia, Jan. 7-8 at the Amata Spring Country Club in Bangkok, Thailand. The full tour resumes two weeks later in Abu Dhabi, the 36th country the tour has visited in its 34-year history. The inaugural Abu Dhabi Golf Championship is set for Jan. 19-22.

Completing the quartet of new tournaments is the BA-CA Golf Open, which graduates to the European Tour after having been a fixture on the developmental European Challenge Tour since 1997. It will take place June 8-11 at the Fontana Golf Club in Vienna, Austria.

Like their Austrian counterpart, the Madeira Island Open and the Cadillac Russian Open both had an association with the Challenge Tour in 2005 -- in the form of dual ranking events with the European Tour -- but in 2006 they will be elevated to fully fledged European Tour events in their own right.

Two established events will feature new venues in 2006. The first of those is the Volvo China Open on Apr. 13-16, which will take place at the Honghua International Golf Club in Beijing, while the WGC–American Express Championship returns to Europe for a fifth time when it is played Sept. 28-Oct. 1 at The Grove in Chandlers Cross, England.

Elsewhere, the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles moves to June 22-25 from August, with the slot in the schedule on Aug. 10-13 being filled by the KLM Open after its departure from June. The other change for the latter tournament is a return to an established venue in The Netherlands, namely the Kennemer Golf & Country Club, Zandvoort, which played host to the tournament as early as 1920 and whose list of winners include Seve Ballesteros (1976) and José Maria Olazábal (1989).