Dubai Tennis Championships

The Dubai Tennis Championships is a WTA 1000 tennis tournament held in Dubai on hard courts, played in February. One tour, one draw: 56 players in the women's singles.

Dubai follows Doha a week later, so the two tournaments are usually played by much the same field in back-to-back weeks. That proximity matters: a player who went deep in Doha arrives here with matches in their legs and no recovery, and the second week of the pair often looks nothing like the first.

The courts are quick and the air is dry, which rewards first-strike tennis. Serves get through, returns have to be taken early, and the long defensive exchanges that decide clay matches barely happen here.

It is one of the last significant events before the calendar moves to the United States for the two large March tournaments, so results here carry into the seeding for them.

The Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships started in 1993 and added the women's week in 2001. The centre court holds around 5,000 people, small for an event at this level, which puts the front rows close enough to hear what players say to their boxes.

Mirra Andreeva won here in 2025 at seventeen years old, the youngest champion at any WTA 1000 event since that category was created in 2009. She beat Clara Tauson in the final and moved into the top ten the same week. The title changes hands often: Jasmine Paolini took it the year before, and the list of Dubai champions has more one-time winners than repeat ones.

Entry lists, the order of play and ticketing are on the official Dubai Tennis Championships site.

Two dates exist for this tournament: the day qualifying begins and the day the main draw does. The ones above are the second kind.

The Dubai Tennis Championships main draw holds 56 players in single elimination, 6 rounds to the title and 55 matches in all, with the top 8 seeds held out of the first round so their route is one match shorter. For how a bracket is built and why qualifiers cause trouble in round one, see the draws guide.

The Dubai Tennis Championships draw with every score is on its own page and updates while the tournament is being played.

Jessica Pegula won the women's title in 2026, beating Elina Svitolina in the final by 6-2, 6-4. They were ranked 3 in the world at the time of writing.

7 of the 8 quarter-finalists in the women's draw were seeded, which is close to what the seedings predicted. Jessica Pegula took the Dubai Tennis Championships title from the number 4 seeding, and the final went 2 sets.

Rights to the Dubai Tennis Championships are sold country by country, so the answer depends entirely on where you are sitting. No public broadcaster in the major markets carries it, which is normal for everything below the majors.

The Dubai Tennis Championships is played in Dubai, in the Gulf, and matches sit in the European afternoon and early evening, one of the friendliest slots of the season for Western European viewers.

The Dubai schedule is built around evening play and the centre court order rarely runs to more than three matches, so the timing is predictable in a way most tournaments are not. Coverage concentrates on centre court and one show court. Because it sits directly after Doha, many of the same players are in both draws, and following one week gives you most of the context for the next.

Beyond the Dubai Tennis Championships, the viewing guide covers the season service by service.