The ATP Finals, the tournament that closes the men's tennis season with the year's top eight players, begin on Sunday at the Inalpi Arena in Turin and run through 22 November. The 2026 edition lost, before a ball was struck, the player who had been dominating it: Jannik Sinner, champion in 2025 and 2024, has withdrawn injured.
Sinner had secured the first qualifying spot of the year. According to the specialist site Tennis365, the Italian has been out since Wimbledon with a knee injury and ended his season early. His withdrawal leaves the tournament without the player who, in 2025, won the final at home against Carlos Alcaraz.
The groups
The draw was made on Thursday. The round-robin stage runs from 15 to 20 November, with the top two in each group advancing. The semifinals are on 21 November, and the finals on 22 — doubles at 3pm and singles at 6pm local time.
John McEnroe Group: Alexander Zverev (Germany), Ben Shelton (United States), Arthur Fils (France) and Rafael Jodar (Spain).
Ivan Lendl Group: Carlos Alcaraz (Spain), Daniil Medvedev, Flavio Cobolli (Italy) and Frances Tiafoe (United States).
Zverev comes in first in the qualifying order, Alcaraz second. The alternates are Alex de Minaur and Taylor Fritz, who step in for anyone who withdraws during the group stage.
Four debutants out of eight
Sinner's absence is not the only novelty in the field. Half the qualifiers have never played the tournament before: Cobolli, Fils, Tiafoe and Jodar are all debutants. That is an unusual proportion for a competition that tends to feature the same names season after season, and which this year will have neither the champion of the last two editions nor, given how the groups fell, any rerun of the 2025 final.
Jodar, eighth in line, is the name that was least expected on this list a year ago — and he landed in the group Tennis365 calls the harder one, alongside Zverev, Shelton and Fils.
What is at stake in money
Total prize money is $15.75 million. In singles, the winner of the final takes $2,412,000, and a semifinal win is worth $1,206,000. Each round-robin win pays $405,000 — meaning an undefeated champion, with three group wins plus semifinal and final, can collect up to $5,171,000 in a week. In doubles, a team that wins everything reaches $959,300. An alternate who never takes the court receives $156,000.
The structure explains why the tournament weighs so heavily on the calendar: there is no knockout draw that can send a favourite home after one match, and every round-robin match pays more than most ATP 250 titles do across a whole year.
With information from the official ATP Tour site, Tennis365 and the English-language Wikipedia.
