WTA Finals

The WTA Finals is the season-ending championship of the women's tour, held in Indian Wells on hard courts, played in November. Eight players qualify for the singles, with eight doubles teams alongside them.

The WTA Finals are not a knockout tournament. The eight players who earned the most ranking points across the season are drawn into two groups of four, everyone plays everyone inside their group, and the top two from each group reach the semi-finals.

That format changes the tennis. A player can lose their opening match and still win the title, and a player can win two matches and go out on the share of sets won, so the arithmetic of qualification is part of the drama from the second day onward.

Getting there is the harder half. Only eight singles players qualify, decided across the whole season rather than a single fortnight, and the last place is often still open when the Asian swing ends.

The event dates from 1972 and has changed host city more often than anything else of its size in the sport: Singapore, Shenzhen, Guadalajara, Fort Worth, Cancún and Riyadh have all staged it since 2014, and Indian Wells takes it in 2026. Eight doubles teams qualify alongside the singles players and play their own group stage across the same week.

Qualification runs on its own table, the season race, which counts points earned since January rather than across the last fifty-two weeks. A player can sit sixth in the world rankings in November and still miss the cut. Martina Navratilova won the year-end championships eight times between 1978 and 1986, a total nobody has come close to since, and the singles trophy now carries Billie Jean King's name. The eight qualifiers are not confirmed until the Asian swing closes, so the field for the last event of the season is one of the last things about it to be settled.

Entry lists, the order of play and ticketing are on the official WTA Finals site.

There is no qualifying to fold into these dates. The eight places are earned across the whole season, and the field is settled only once the last tournament before it finishes.

The WTA Finals bracket is still filling in, so the full field is not settled yet. The rounds below show the matches as they are drawn. The draws guide sets the group stage beside the knockout draws every other tournament uses.

Elena Rybakina won the women's title in 2025, beating Aryna Sabalenka in the final by 6-3, 7-6. World number 2 on the list current when this page was built.

Rights to the WTA Finals are sold country by country, so the answer depends entirely on where you are sitting. There is no free-to-air option for this event in the major markets, which is normal below Grand Slam level.

The WTA Finals is played in Indian Wells, and matches follow the local schedule, so check the order of play against your own time zone before committing an evening to it.

The season finals play two singles matches a day through the group stage, so the commitment is a couple of hours rather than a full session, and every match is on the main court with full coverage. There are no outside courts to miss. Because the format is round-robin, the results of the earlier matches change what the later ones mean, so watching in order is worth more here than at a normal tournament.

The viewing guide sets out what each service carries across a season and where the gaps fall.