Australian Open

The Australian Open is a Grand Slam tennis tournament held in Melbourne on hard courts, played in January. Both tours play here in the same fortnight on the same courts, so a single ticket covers men's and women's matches. Each main singles draw holds 128 players.

Melbourne in January is the hottest fortnight of the tennis year. The tournament runs a formal heat policy that can suspend play on the outside courts and close the roofs on the main ones, and matches scheduled at two in the afternoon are a different physical proposition from the same match under lights at nine.

It is also the major that catches players least prepared. The off-season in tennis lasts a matter of weeks, and the Australian Open arrives after a warm-up stretch of barely a fortnight, so form is unreliable and fitness is uneven. That combination is why the first major of the year has a habit of producing runs nobody had in their bracket.

The courts themselves are medium-paced hard, quicker than Indian Wells and slower than a fast indoor court, which keeps the tournament open to more than one kind of player.

The tournament began in 1905 and has been played at Melbourne Park since 1988, the year it left grass for hard courts. Three of its show courts sit under retractable roofs, more than any other major has, so a wet afternoon in Melbourne moves matches indoors instead of wiping out the day.

Entry lists, the order of play and ticketing are on the official Australian Open site.

The dates at the top of this page are main-draw dates. Qualifying is played the week before, and calendars that include it will show this tournament starting seven days earlier than we do.

The Australian Open main draw holds 128 players in single elimination, 7 rounds to the title and 127 matches in all. How seeding, byes and qualifying work is explained in the guides.

The Australian Open draw with every score is on its own page and updates while the tournament is being played.

Carlos Alcaraz won the men's title in 2026, beating Novak Djokovic in the final by 2-6, 6-2, 6-3, 7-5. They were ranked 3 in the world at the time of writing.

Elena Rybakina won the women's title in 2026, beating Aryna Sabalenka in the final by 6-4, 4-6, 6-4. World number 1 on the list current when this page was built.

8 of the 8 quarter-finalists in the men's draw were seeded, which is close to what the seedings predicted. Carlos Alcaraz took the Australian Open title from the number 1 seeding, and the final went 4 sets.

8 of the 8 quarter-finalists in the women's draw were seeded, which is close to what the seedings predicted. Elena Rybakina took the Australian Open title from the number 5 seeding, and the final went 3 sets.

Rights to the Australian Open are sold country by country, so the answer depends entirely on where you are sitting. One country gets it free to air: Australia.

The Australian Open is played in Melbourne, in Australia, and matches run through the European night and the American evening: play starts around 11am local, which is the small hours in London and late evening on the US east coast.

If you are watching from Australia, you do not need a subscription: Channel 9 and 9Now carries it free. Everywhere else on the list above is behind a paywall of some kind, which is the normal state of tennis broadcasting rather than anything unusual about this tournament.

Melbourne runs day and night sessions on the three roofed courts, and the night session is the one worth planning around: it starts at 7pm local, which is 8am in London and 3am in New York. The roofs mean the schedule holds even in rain, so a match listed for the night session will be played that night. Qualifying happens the week before and is streamed rather than televised, which is where you find the players who go on to cause trouble in round one.

If you follow more than one tournament a year, the viewing guide compares the subscriptions against each other.