ATP Finals 2026: format, qualification and how it works

Jannik Sinner won his last 10 matches at the ATP Finals without dropping a set, and he will not be in Turin this year. The 2026 ATP Finals, the men’s season-ending event for the eight best singles players and doubles teams, runs from November 15 to 22 at the Inalpi Arena in Turin, Italy. Sinner, the two-time defending champion, ended his season on October 6 because of knee inflammation.

Quick answer: The ATP Finals 2026 takes the top eight singles players and top eight doubles teams of the season, mostly decided by the PIF ATP Race To Turin after the Paris Masters ends on November 8. They are split into two round-robin groups of four. The top two in each group reach the semi-finals, where each group winner plays the other group’s runner-up. An unbeaten singles champion earns 1,500 ranking points and $5,171,000.

In this article:

• When and where the 2026 event is played
• How qualification works, including the Grand Slam rule
• Who has qualified as of October 28
• What happens when a player withdraws
• How the groups and tie-breaks work
• Semi-finals, points and prize money
• How the event got from Tokyo to Turin

When and where is the ATP Finals 2026?

Play runs over eight days, Sunday, November 15, to Sunday, November 22, at the Inalpi Arena, the indoor hall in Turin built for ice hockey at the 2006 Winter Olympics. It is the sixth edition in the city. On July 16, 2026, the ATP and the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation (FITP) announced that the event stays in Turin through 2027 and in Italy through 2030, with the 2028 host city still to be decided.

Turin is on Central European Time (CET) in November, one hour ahead of GMT. A 2 p.m. start in Turin is 13:00 GMT and 8 a.m. in New York. The ATP publishes each day’s order of play the evening before.

The ATP says seating in the arena will pass 13,500 this year. In 2025 the event drew a record 229,879 spectators over the week, according to the ATP.

How do players qualify for the ATP Finals?

Every point a player earns on the ATP Tour from January counts toward the PIF ATP Race To Turin, a calendar-year ranking that resets each season. The ATP rulebook sets the selection order in three steps:

1. Take the top seven players in the rankings on the Monday after the last ATP Tour event of the year.
2. Add up to two Grand Slam champions of that year who sit between 8th and 20th, in ranking order.
3. Fill any place left with the players ranked 8th and below.

The first eight names on that list are “direct acceptances”. Playing is mandatory for them, and they must attend the pre-tournament media conference in Turin.

The middle step is the one most guides skip. It protects a player who wins a major and then has a thin rest of the season: a Wimbledon champion ranked 12th would take the eighth place ahead of the player ranked eighth. It can only bite when a major winner falls outside the top seven.

It will almost certainly sit idle in 2026. Carlos Alcaraz won the Australian Open, Alexander Zverev won Roland Garros and Sinner won Wimbledon, and all three were in the top three of the Race in October. That is why the ATP declared Alcaraz qualified as early as September 16: as Australian Open champion he was guaranteed to finish inside the top 20, which was enough.

Doubles uses the same three steps with the PIF ATP Doubles Team Rankings, where pairs are ranked as teams rather than as individuals.

Who has qualified for Turin so far?

Four singles players had secured places by October 28. Sinner’s place no longer counts, because he will not play.

Player	Country	Qualified	Status
Jannik Sinner	Italy	July 10	Out for the season (knee)
Alexander Zverev	Germany	August 6	Qualified
Carlos Alcaraz	Spain	September 16	Qualified
Ben Shelton	United States	October 18	Qualified, second straight year
Source: ATP Tour qualification announcements, July to October 2026; 2026 ATP Finals entry, Wikipedia, October 2026.

Sinner was the first to qualify, on July 10, by beating Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon semi-finals. He was second in the Race with 7,950 points when his team announced from Monaco on October 6 that his 2026 season was over. Tennis Majors reported that his team never formally confirmed the exact nature of the knee problem.

Five singles places remain. After the Shanghai Masters, the ATP’s Race table of October 18 had Flavio Cobolli (Italy) fifth, Daniil Medvedev sixth, Frances Tiafoe (United States) seventh, Arthur Fils (France) eighth and Rafael Jodar (Spain) ninth. With Sinner out, ninth is effectively the last place in. Alex de Minaur (Australia) and Djokovic were close behind. All of these positions can change at the Paris Masters.

In doubles, four teams were in by October 26: Harri Heliövaara (Finland) and Henry Patten (Britain), the 2025 champions, from July 11; Marcel Granollers (Spain) and Horacio Zeballos (Argentina); Christian Harrison (United States) and Neal Skupski (Britain); and Marcelo Arévalo (El Salvador) and Mate Pavić (Croatia), who qualified on October 26 for a third straight year.

What happens when a qualified player withdraws?

The rulebook handles this in two stages, and the dividing line is the pre-tournament media conference in Turin.

Before that conference, a withdrawn player is simply replaced by the next name on the selection list, who becomes a full direct acceptance. That is what will happen with Sinner’s place. It happened in 2025 too: Djokovic qualified, then withdrew after winning the Athens title the weekend before Turin, and Lorenzo Musetti of Italy took his place in the Jimmy Connors Group.

After the conference, the alternate steps in. The alternate is the next player on the list, and he must attend the conference and stay available until the last round-robin match begins. The details decide what he earns:

• If he never plays, he receives an alternate fee: $156,000 in singles in 2026.
• If he comes in for a second or third group match, he gets that fee plus any prize money and points he wins.
• If he replaces a player before that player’s first match, he becomes a direct acceptance and the fee falls away.

An alternate who comes in can still reach the semi-finals. A player who withdraws from a group match after the first round cannot, even if his results would otherwise put him through.

Skipping the event without an injury or other good cause carries a penalty of 5% of the player’s ATP prize money for the year, under the rulebook.

How do the round-robin groups work?

Seeds come from the rankings on the Monday after the season’s last ATP Tour event. The top seed goes into one group and the second seed into the other. Seeds three and four, five and six, and seven and eight are then drawn in pairs, the first drawn of each pair going to the first group. The draw keeps the two best players apart until the final and spreads the rest evenly.

Since 2015 the ATP has usually named the groups after past champions (2020, the last London year, used the first and last host cities instead). In 2025 they were the Jimmy Connors Group and the Bjorn Borg Group. The 2026 names come with the draw.

Each player plays the other three in his group. Singles matches, including the final, are best of three sets with a tie-break in every set. Doubles matches are two sets with no-advantage scoring, and a 10-point match tie-break at one set all.

How are ties in the groups broken?

With only three matches each, ties are common, and the ATP’s order is strict:

1. Most wins.
2. Most matches played. A 2-1 record beats 2-0, which only happens when someone has withdrawn or been replaced.
3. Head-to-head, if exactly two players are level.
4. Three-way ties go to percentage of sets won, then percentage of games won, then the ranking position.

The clause that catches people out comes next. As soon as any step separates one player from a three-way tie, the remaining two go back to their head-to-head result rather than carrying on down the list. The rulebook’s own example: three players on 2-1, one with sets of 5-2 (71.43%), two with 4-3 (57.14%). The 5-2 player wins the group, and the runner-up is whichever of the other two won their match.

A retirement or default counts as a straight-sets result in the standings, but games from that match are left out of the games-won percentage. The rulebook says this stops a player who needs only one set from winning it and then retiring.

How do the semi-finals work, and what is at stake?

Each group winner plays the runner-up from the other group, so two players from the same group can only meet again in the final. There is no third-place match.

Stage (2026)	Singles prize	Ranking points
Each round-robin win	$405,000	200
Semi-final win	$1,206,000	400
Final win	$2,412,000	500
Undefeated champion, in total	$5,171,000	1,500
Source: Nitto ATP Finals, points and prize money, 2026.

Every player also receives a participation fee: $169,000 for one match, $253,000 for two and $338,000 for three. Doubles teams play for $96,600 per group win and $959,300 for an unbeaten title. No points come from qualifying itself; every point is won on court.

The singles rates are about 2% above 2025, when the ATP reported a record total of $15.5 million and Sinner collected $5.07 million for winning the title unbeaten.

From Tokyo to Turin: how the event has changed

The tournament has used five names and moved continents several times.

• 1970: First edition in Tokyo, as the Masters Grand Prix, played all round robin.
• 1977 to 1989: Madison Square Garden in New York.
• 1990 to 1999: The ATP Tour World Championship, in Frankfurt and then Hanover, Germany.
• 2000 to 2008: The Tennis Masters Cup, in Lisbon, Sydney, Shanghai and Houston.
• 2009 to 2020: The ATP World Tour Finals at the O2 Arena in London, renamed the ATP Finals in 2017.
• 2021: The move to Turin.
• July 16, 2026: Turin confirmed through 2027, Italy through 2030.

Djokovic holds the singles record with seven titles; Roger Federer won six. Sinner’s 15-2 record at the event, by the ATP’s count, includes the 2024 and 2025 titles. Turin will crown someone other than Sinner for the first time since Djokovic won in 2023.

What to watch before November 15

The Paris Masters, which ends on November 8, is the last chance to earn Race points. On the ATP’s Live Race table, a player is marked as qualified once no one below him can catch him in the selection order. Until that mark appears, a place is only a projection.

Then watch the alternates. The players just outside the eight travel to Turin, attend the media conference and wait. Djokovic’s late exit in 2025 showed how quickly the ninth name on the list can become a player in the draw.

For more on how other sports turn a season into a final, see our guides to the NBA Cup format and tie-breakers and the Formula 1 points system.