US Open 2026 runs 23 August to 13 September, with the mixed doubles final on 26 August and the main draw not starting until 30 August.
The US Open announced on 29 January 2025 that its singles main draws would expand to 15 days with a Sunday start, adding a day of play at the front of the tournament. It was presented then as a change to the 2025 edition. The tournament's April 2026 ticketing post says the 15-day main draw returns following last year's success, so 2026 is the second running of it.
The USTA announced total player compensation of 90 million dollars for the 2025 US Open, up 20 per cent on the 75 million paid in 2024. The singles champions took 5 million dollars each, up from 3.6 million the year before. ESPN reported prize money across all competitions at close to 85 million, with the rest made up of player support and other compensation. Those are still the figures on the tournament's published prize money page, which matters later on this page.
The USTA reported total attendance across the three weeks of the 2025 US Open at 1,144,562. That was up 9 per cent on 2024, and above a million for the second year running. Main draw singles and doubles attendance passed 900,000 for the first time, at 905,255. Fan Week accounted for 239,307 of the total, up 10 per cent.
The USTA announced on Monday 17 November 2025 that Eric Butorac would become tournament director of the US Open, succeeding Stacey Allaster. Butorac played professionally for 14 years and reached the top 20 in ATP doubles. He was a doubles finalist at the 2014 Australian Open. He joined the USTA in 2016 and ran the Cincinnati Open in 2022, and he was tournament director of the new mixed doubles event in 2025. Allaster, the first woman to hold the role, moved into a strategic advisor position in May 2026. The 2026 tournament is Butorac's first in charge.
The tournament published its on-sale dates. Amex presale opened at 09:00 ET on Tuesday 26 May and closed at 23:59 ET on Wednesday 27 May, with public on-sale at 12:00 ET on Thursday 28 May. The post told returning fans that the public on-sale was starting earlier in the year than before and at a new time of day. The same post confirmed the singles main draws would again run 15 days, opening Sunday 30 August and finishing Sunday 13 September.
The reimagined Mixed Doubles Championship won Sports Breakthrough of the Year at the 2026 Sports Business Journal Awards. The USTA's own account of the 2025 edition gives the numbers. Sixteen teams played for 1 million dollars across two days of Fan Week. Coverage ran on 17 networks in more than 170 countries and territories, including 13 hours across ESPN2 and ESPNews. Arthur Ashe Stadium sold out on both days, and more than 20,000 people scanned a Fan Access Pass to watch free in Louis Armstrong Stadium on the Tuesday. The same USTA page describes the field as including 13 of the Top 10 WTA and ATP players. That is the tournament's wording, reproduced here as published.
Public on-sale day, and the day the tournament published the shape of the thing. Twenty-two days of tennis and entertainment, 23 August to 13 September, eight of them with free grounds admission. The USTA calls it the largest event schedule and the most competition days in the tournament's near-150-year history. The same post listed the changes. Arthur Ashe Kids' Day moves to open Fan Week on Sunday 23 August. Free grounds admission now covers seven Fan Week days plus one day inside the main draw. The Mixed Doubles Championship gains a day of qualifying.
Worth recording because it is still there. The 28 May post gives the Mixed Doubles main draw as Tuesday, Aug. 24 and the semifinals and final as Wednesday, Aug. 25. In 2026, 24 August is a Monday. The tournament's published Schedule of Play and its own entry-list post of 3 August both put the first round and quarterfinals on Tuesday 25 August, and the semifinals and final on Wednesday 26 August. The weekday names in the May post are right and the dates attached to them are a day early. Nobody has corrected it.
The tournament published an updated mixed doubles entry list running to 29 teams, ordered by combined singles ranking. Aryna Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic head it. Also entered are Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud, the 2025 runners-up; Venus Williams and Alexander Bublik; Elina Svitolina and Gael Monfils; Naomi Osaka and Kei Nishikori; and the siblings Peyton and Preston Stearns. Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, who won it in 2025, are in to defend. Neither Carlos Alcaraz nor Jannik Sinner appears on the list. The entry window is scheduled to close at noon on Monday 17 August. The top six teams by combined singles ranking at that moment are directly accepted. Eight places go to wild cards, and two more are due to be won through an eight-team qualifying draw on Monday 24 August. Tickets in Arthur Ashe Stadium start at 30 dollars for the Tuesday and 45 dollars for the Wednesday night session.
The tournament published its Fan Week guide. The headline addition is an exhibition scheduled for 19:30 on Tuesday 25 August in Arthur Ashe Stadium, billed as Roger Federer: An Icon Returns to New York, with Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi and John McEnroe also playing. A separate ticket is required. Two other things are worth knowing before turning up. The free Fan Access Pass is now compulsory for everyone aged 18 and over entering the grounds during Fan Week, and it lives in the US Open app. The giveaway this year is a set of Marvel covers built around Spider-Man, one classic and five limited editions for the five boroughs, going to the first 1,000 fans each day between 24 and 28 August.
As this page was compiled, the tournament's prize money page still carried the 2025 table. That is 5 million dollars to each singles champion and 110,000 dollars for a first-round loss, against 90 million dollars in total player compensation. The 2025 figures were announced on 6 August 2025, about three weeks before that year's main draw opened. Several aggregator sites are already publishing a 2026 total of 95 million dollars. That figure does not appear on any USTA or usopen.org page read for this timeline. At least one of the sites carrying it describes 95 million as an increase of over 20 per cent on 90 million, which it is not. Treat the number as unconfirmed until the USTA publishes its own.
The tournament is being played on a building site. The USTA is midway through an 800 million dollar self-funded reinvestment in the National Tennis Center, which the tournament describes as the largest single investment in US Open history. Reported splits put roughly 600 million of that on Arthur Ashe Stadium and 250 million on a new Player Performance Center, which adds up to more than the headline figure; the tournament's own renovation page gives no breakdown. The performance centre is going up in what used to be Parking Lot A. Phase 1 finished in 2025 and was mostly column reinforcement. Phase 2 is active across 2025 and 2026, replacing the old courtside and suite levels with an expanded bowl and two new luxury suite levels. Phase 3 runs into 2027 and brings a Grand Entrance designed by Daniel Libeskind. The tournament lists about 2,000 additional courtside seats and a promenade concourse 40 per cent larger. Players do not get inside the finished performance centre until the 2027 US Open.
Scheduled for 20:00 ET in Louis Armstrong Stadium: The Lumineers, with Petey USA supporting. Ticketed. It is set two days ahead of the official opening of Fan Week.
Fan Week opens. Arthur Ashe Kids' Day, which used to sit later in the week, is scheduled to run 09:30 to 18:00 as the first day of the 2026 US Open, with programming extended this year. The stadium show in Arthur Ashe is scheduled for 11:00 to 12:30 and features the Savannah Bananas alongside US Open players, with a meet and greet afterwards. On courts 4 to 7, the US Open Qualifying Wildcard Challenge is scheduled 10:00 to 16:00. It is two matches, a semifinal and a final, and the winner takes a place in the qualifying tournament. Free with a Fan Access Pass.
Qualifying is scheduled to begin on the field courts and run through to Thursday 27 August. The draw is 128 men and 128 women competing for the last 16 places in the singles main draws. The tournament says qualifying players are traditionally ranked between No. 100 and No. 250 in the world. Free with a Fan Access Pass. Mixed doubles qualifying is scheduled for 11:00 in the Grandstand on the same day, also free. Eight teams are in that draw, playing for two main draw places. Six of the eight are direct entries and two are wild cards. This qualifying day did not exist in 2025.
Scheduled for 17:00 to 19:00 at Fountain Plaza, Monday 24 to Friday 28 August. Live music and drink offers. Free with a Fan Access Pass. It is on the official lineup, so it is here.
Two things are scheduled for Tuesday 25 August. The Mixed Doubles Championship plays its first round and quarterfinals at 10:00 in Louis Armstrong Stadium, which is free with a Fan Access Pass. Arthur Ashe Stadium follows at 11:00, where tickets start at 30 dollars. Then at 19:30 in Arthur Ashe, the Federer exhibition. The scoring is worth knowing before watching it. Matches up to the semifinals are best of three, with sets to four games and a tie-break at four-all. Scoring is no-advantage. A 10-point tie-break replaces a third set.
The mixed doubles semifinals and final are scheduled for 19:00 in Arthur Ashe Stadium, tickets starting at 45 dollars. The final is played to a different format from the rounds before it. Sets run to six games with a tie-break at six-all. No-advantage scoring stays, and a 10-point tie-break again replaces a third set. Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori are the defending champions. Whoever wins is the first US Open champion of 2026, four days before the singles main draw begins.
The last day of qualifying, and the last of the five Fan Week play sessions on the published schedule. Stars of the Open is scheduled for 18:00 in Arthur Ashe Stadium, in its fourth consecutive year, with Alexandra Eala, Joao Fonseca, Iva Jovic and Learner Tien named to play. A separate ticket is required and part of the proceeds go to the USTA Foundation. Free grounds admission is scheduled to continue through Saturday 29 August, even though the published Schedule of Play lists no qualifying sessions after this day.
The singles main draws are scheduled to open on Sunday 30 August with two ticketed sessions. Gates at 09:30 for an 11:00 start, then gates at 18:00 for a 19:00 start, first round in both. This is the second year of the 15-day format. One scheduling note sits in the published Schedule of Play. Matches in Arthur Ashe Stadium begin at 11:30 on every day of the main draw except 30 August and the four days 10 to 13 September. Opening day is one of the exceptions.
Grounds admission is scheduled to be free on Thursday 10 September, the eighth and last of the free days and the only one inside the main draw. Session 23 that morning has gates at 11:00 for a noon start, carrying the men's doubles semifinals and the opening rounds of the wheelchair draws. The women's singles semifinals are scheduled for 19:00 the same evening in a ticketed stadium session, so the free grounds pass and the Arthur Ashe ticket are two different things on the same day.
Scheduled for Friday 11 September: one men's singles semifinal at 15:00 in session 24, the other at 19:00 in session 25. They are sold as separate sessions, so a ticket to one is not a ticket to the other. Session 24 also carries the women's doubles final at noon and the wheelchair singles semifinals.
Scheduled for Saturday 12 September in Arthur Ashe Stadium. The same session opens at noon with the men's doubles final. The wheelchair and quad singles finals and the junior finals are on the same programme.
The men's singles final is scheduled for Sunday 13 September, gates at 11:00 and play at 14:00. It is the 27th and last ticketed session of the tournament, on the 22nd day. No result is predicted here.
Compiled 12 August 2026. Every item dated after that is a scheduled one, and schedules move. Primary sources, all read on usopen.org this run: the Schedule of Play; the ticket on-sale post of 23 April 2026; the Sports Business Journal award post of 21 May 2026; the 22-days announcement of 28 May 2026; the mixed doubles entry list of 3 August 2026; the Fan Week guide of 4 August 2026; and the prize money page, which still carried 2025 figures. Construction phasing comes from the tournament's own renovation page at hospitality.usopen.org. Secondary reporting was used for the 2025 attendance total and for the appointment of Eric Butorac, drawn from ESPN, NBC Sports, The Washington Post, Tennis Now and QNS. The 2025 prize money announcement was checked against ESPN as well as the tournament's own page. The USTA's main site was offline for maintenance when checked. Pictures are Wikimedia Commons files of the venues and of players in competition. There is no free photography of the 2026 event, because it has not happened, so several events here carry none.