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In under three weeks’ time, the best women’s tennis players in the world will descend on Melbourne for the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the season and the first tennis milestone for 2026.
After a stupendous 2025 season, the WTA Tour is even more intriguingly poised than it was this time last year. Five different players won the five biggest titles. World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and world No. 2 Iga Świątek reasserted their separation as the two best players in the world, but the resurgence of Elena Rybakina, the rise of Amanda Anisimova, and Coco Gauff’s ability to win with two of the most important shots in the sport decidedly off-kilter sets up 2026 as a year of thrilling rivalries and sub-plots.
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Elsewhere, the breakout stars of last year seek to solidify their positions, the flagship event in women’s tennis has a decision to make — oh, and Serena Williams has put herself in the position to come back. If she wants.
The Athletic’s tennis writers, Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare, outline the biggest women’s tennis storylines for the 2026 season.
What now for the Świątek vs. Sabalenka rivalry?
Sabalenka and Świątek are undoubtedly the two best players in the world. They are the only two to hold the No. 1 ranking since Ash Barty retired, at the top of tennis, in March 2022. That is a lot of data.
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Still, they haven’t played that much during that time, especially on the biggest stages. They have never met in a major final, and have played just once at a Grand Slam since Sabalenka rose to the top two in 2023. That was in the semifinal at last year’s French Open, when they produced two brilliant sets before a third in which Świątek faded. They rarely get to use each other as an on-court measuring stick, but their performances last year suggest that 2026 will see Świątek seeking what Sabalenka has, and visa versa.
The big question for Świątek is whether she can regain the top ranking. She gave it every effort she had this fall, but she ran out of gas and tournaments, and couldn’t get into the last four at the WTA Tour Finals. She will start 2026 about 2,500 points behind Sabalenka, and they both defend too many points at the Australian Open for there to be a switch at the top unless one of them exits early.
The thing Świątek has that Sabalenka lacks? Consistency in the very biggest matches. The Belarusian went to 12 semifinals in 2025, winning nine; Świątek went to 10 and won only five. But of her nine finals, Sabalenka won four; Świątek won three of five. They both won one major each.
In Grand Slam finals, Sabalenka is 4-3 and Świątek is 6-0; in all WTA Tour finals inclusive of Grand Slams, Sabalenka is 21-19 and Świątek is 26-6. Their respective missions are clear, and if they are to achieve them, they will have to take something that the other has.
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With four American women in the top 10, who will stand out?
The top of women’s tennis will start the season with a decidedly American feel. There are four American women in the top 7, and the U.S. has two of the top 4 as well, in Gauff and Anisimova.
Jessica Pegula and Madison Keys are close behind at No. 6 and No. 7, but quite a way back in terms of rankings points.
Now the questions are: Who will emerge as the best of the lot from a standing-still start? And can any of them mount a genuine challenge for the top two spots?
Keys and Pegula are on the other side of 30. That makes them the underdogs on paper. Keys, who defends her Australian Open title in January, wasn’t great during the second half of last season, sputtering through the summer and losing in the first round of the U.S. Open, before playing only two more matches on the year.
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Pegula has been achieving so much since 2020 that it’s insulting to suggest she is overachieving at this point, and reaching the semifinals of the U.S. Open, the semifinals of the China Open, the Wuhan Open final and the semifinals at the season-ending Tour Finals suggests that she is not running out of steam.
Chasing down Anisimova and Gauff is a different task. Anisimova is trying to follow up a breakout season and Gauff is trying to find the form that made her the French Open champion. How is she doing that? Well, that leads on to the next question…
Can Gauff find her rhythm on the two most important shots in tennis?
This might be the year that makes or breaks Gavin MacMillan.
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He’s the biomechanics specialist who showed Sabalenka how to fix her serve and forehand, beginning in 2022. When Sabalenka and MacMillan parted, Gauff scooped him up, and started remodeling her own troublesome serve and forehand for the second time — and just before the U.S. Open. It led to some of the stranger matches of the year, especially a clash on Arthur Ashe Stadium with Donna Vekić in which Gauff practiced her serve in front of around 20,000 people while her opponent received a medical timeout.
The results of their collaboration have been mixed, but promising. Two months after MacMillan signed on, Gauff won the Wuhan Open, the season’s last WTA 1000 event. The WTA Tour Finals was less good, as her serve wobbled and she struggled to remain consistently aggressive with her forehand. So often she hit off her back foot, doing an awkward hop-jump with her weight not transferring forward.
The complicating factor is that Gauff has still been winning despite all this, using her foot speed, athleticism and significantly more secure backhand to compensate for points lost to double faults or forehand errors. She is also still just 21, even though it seems like she’s been around forever. She has spent some time at world No. 2. She won the French Open final last year in swirling wind, beating Sabalenka.
But Gauff wants more than that, and to produce the kind of form required to match Sabalenka and Świątek’s accumulation of ranking points, she will need to get her serve and forehand fundamentals to a better place.
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— Matt Futterman
What now for the World Tennis winners who made huge first impressions on the WTA Tour?
After starting their seasons by winning relentlessly on the third-tier World Tennis Tour, Victoria Mboko, Loïs Boisson, Janice Tjen and Tereza Valentová ended 2025 inside the world’s top 60. Mboko, Boisson and Tjen won their first WTA Tour titles, while Valentová reached her first final and all four made significant impressions at the Grand Slams, most notably with Boisson’s run to the French Open semifinals.
Now, the next challenge: backing up their breakthrough seasons, up against players who have become more familiar with their games, their strengths and their weaknesses. There’s also the step up to the physical demands of a first full season on the WTA Tour, off the back of playing a huge number of matches to pick up the requisite points to get to that place.
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All four players have shown that they have the class and character to overcome these challenges, but it will be fascinating to see just how high they can climb in 2026. Mboko already has a WTA 1000 title to her name at the Canadian Open, while Boisson and Tjen’s heavy-forehand-and-skidding-slice combinations flummoxed top players and Valentová ran Gauff and Rybakina close with her creativity and power.
Between them, they look primed to shake up the established order at the top of the tour over the next year or so.
Where will the WTA Tour Finals go — and what will the choice mean for women’s tennis?
As things stand, the 2026 WTA Tour Finals will be the third, and last, edition in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Through the first two, players and tour officials have credited the growing interest in tennis in the kingdom and the financial commitments it has made to the sport, but its human rights record, and the impact of its immaturity as a tennis nation on the status and gravitas around the event have made the partnership controversial.
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During an interview at this year’s event, chief executive Paula Archer said that the WTA “signed on for a three-year term, and we’d actually enjoy being here for even longer than we have been, or than we are agreed to be here.” She added that talks to extend the agreement are ongoing, which remains the case at the time of writing.
The players have enjoyed the facilities and smooth running of the event, even if attendances have been up and down, and there are those like WTA Tour co-founder and champion Billie Jean King who share the WTA’s view that engagement is one route to effecting change for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, a country whose laws require women to get permission from a male guardian to marry, and which has been heavily criticized for its treatment of women, political dissidents, and the LGBTQIA+ community.
Other legends of the sport, like Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, have taken a far more critical view than King, and don’t think women’s tennis’ flagship event should be hosted in a country whose laws are so at odds with the WTA’s founding values.
PIF, the sovereign wealth fund which sponsors the WTA and ATP Tour rankings, and a maternity program on the women’s tour, has repeatedly declined to comment when asked about its ties to the kingdom’s rulers and the kingdom’s human rights record.
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There will be plenty of attention on whatever the WTA decides to do with its most important event, and the decision represents a big, early call for new chair Valerie Camillo, who has replaced the retired Steve Simon.
And is a GOAT going to give the sporting world a straight answer?
If Serena Williams really isn’t planning a tennis comeback, what was it exactly that attracted her to reentering its anti-doping pool? Does she love the admin of updating her daily whereabouts? Does she enjoy the early-morning doorbell ring of someone coming to take a urine sample?
When her reentry was revealed earlier this month, Williams, now 44, hastily sought to quash the rumours, posting on X: “I’m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy.”
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But realistically, there is no way anyone would go through six months’ adherence to anti-doping rules unless they wanted to keep the option open. And if a 23-time Grand Slam champion and unmatched superstar were to return to tennis, she would probably want to announce it in a more grabby way than being seen on an administrative list.
Should Williams want to return, the U.S. Open mixed doubles event would appear to be the perfect vehicle, with its emphasis on stardust and entertainment. She may fancy playing a few doubles events with her sister Venus; she may have looked at Venus’ competitive return to singles earlier this year, aged 45, and thought that she could have another few tournaments in her too.
Despite her claim that she isn’t planning a return to tennis, the sport will be on red alert for whispers of a comeback.
— Charlie Eccleshare
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Three players outside the top 100 to watch on the WTA Tour in 2026
Darja Vidmanova, 22, Czechia: World No. 149
Hoping to be the next member of the college-tennis-to-sustained-WTA-Tour-success pipeline is Vidmanova, the Russian-born Czech who won the individual NCAA singles title in 2024, and then the team one in 2025 with the Georgia Bullfrogs, before producing what has become a familiar omen for a breakout year: a long run of wins in the second and third tiers. After 15 wins in a row, Vidmanova twice ran into Caty McNally, the American recovering from injury who is a far better player than her ranking in 2025 suggested, and is a tough draw at any level.
Undeterred, she went to the Guadalajara Open in Mexico, a WTA 500 event, went through qualifying and beat Alycia Parks, then the world No. 58, in the first round before losing in the second. Now primed for regular qualifying berths at the biggest events, Vidmanova should make even more of a mark in 2026.
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Lilli Tagger, 17, Austria: World No. 159
Tagger’s fluent single-handed backhand is eyecatching, especially due to its rarity on the WTA Tour, but it’s her flowing serve and front-foot approach to tennis that brought her the French Open girls’ title in 2025, as well as a first tour-level final at the Jiangxi Open in Jiujiang, China. Tagger beat two top-100 players on that run, and won 25 of her 33 senior matches at all levels on the year. There is much more to come.
Alina Korneeva, 18, Russia: World No. 211
At the start of 2025, Mirra Andreeva was the only teenager in the WTA Tour top 100. On her way up, she reached the Australian Open girls’ final in 2023, where she lost to Korneeva, one month her senior. Since then, Andreeva has risen and risen, while Korneeva has seen her own rise largely deferred by repeated setbacks with wrist injuries.
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In the same year that she beat Andreeva, she went 31-8 and made her full WTA Tour debut, before a seven-month absence due to wrist problems that broke the back of her 2024 season. In 2025, she lost more matches than she had become accustomed to losing, but far more importantly, played a great deal more of them, despite missing nearly six months between January and June.
If she can stay healthy, 2026 should be the year that this prodigious talent shows the world what she is capable of.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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