Since 2023, 50 players qualify for the BMW Championship after the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
The number changed when the PGA Tour restructured the FedEx Cup Playoffs for 2023. The opening playoff event, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, was reduced from a 125-player field to 70. After that tournament, only the top 50 players in the FedEx Cup standings advanced to the BMW Championship.
That makes the BMW Championship the second of the three playoff events. It is a no-cut tournament: all 50 eligible players are intended to compete over 72 holes, with the standings recalculated afterward. The final event, the Tour Championship, then takes the top 30 players.
The numbers are easy to mix up because the previous format used 125 players in the first playoff event and 70 in the BMW Championship. Beginning in 2023, the sequence became 70, then 50, then 30. The stored answer refers specifically to the field advancing from the FedEx St. Jude Championship, so 50 is the canonical answer.