Ninety-six players make up the men’s and women’s singles draws at the 2026 Cincinnati Open, with 32 seeds in each field earning a bye straight into the second round. The tournament runs as a combined ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000 event, staged on outdoor hard courts at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio, from August 13 to 23.
Twice the Size It Used to Be
The current format is only a year old. In 2024, Cincinnati fielded 56 players with 16 seeds, a compact draw that fit into a single week. The jump to 96 players and 32 seeds arrived in 2025, and it changed more than the bracket’s shape.
- 2024 draw: 56 players, 16 seeds, played in a single compressed week
- 2025-2026 draw: 96 players, 32 seeds, stretched across a full fortnight
That extra layer of seeded byes is why the tournament now needs two weeks instead of one to reach a champion.
A Tournament With Deep Roots
This year’s edition is the 125th men’s tournament and the 98th women’s tournament held under the Cincinnati banner, a run of editions that places it among the longest continuously held tennis tournaments in the United States. That longevity gives the 2026 format change added weight, as organizers were willing to alter a rhythm more than 120 years in the making.
Two Missing Favorites
The bigger draw arrives without either of the men’s top two seeds. World No. 1 Jannik Sinner withdrew from Cincinnati 2026 with a right knee injury, the same issue that had already forced him out of the preceding Canadian Open in Montreal. Carlos Alcaraz is also absent, sidelined by a right wrist injury.
Alcaraz has not played a competitive match since April. The wrist injury kept him out of Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros -where he was the defending champion- and Wimbledon, and it now adds Cincinnati to that list.
“Sabemos que Carlos está fazendo o possível para voltar a competir o quanto antes,” Cincinnati Open tournament director Bob Moran said, meaning the tournament knows Carlos is doing everything possible to return to competition as soon as he can.
Alcaraz enters this stretch of the calendar as the reigning US Open champion, which adds weight to how quickly his recovery timeline unfolds before he has to defend that title in New York.
The Road to New York
Cincinnati is the last major stop of the North American hard-court swing before the US Open. Alcaraz reclaimed the world No. 2 ranking on August 3, overtaking Alexander Zverev, and his team has considered requesting a wildcard for the ATP 250 event in Winston-Salem, running August 23-29, to rebuild match rhythm before Flushing Meadows.
Cincinnati’s own bracket work is not finished until players navigate all 96 names in the draw, a field the tournament runs concurrently for men and women, seeded 32 deep on each side. The US Open, one of the most-watched sporting events in TV history, begins August 30, 2026, one week after Cincinnati’s final is played.
A Season of Format Changes
Cincinnati’s leap from 56 to 96 players is part of a broader pattern across 2026: sports have been reshaping their formats to change how competition plays out. The 2026 World Cup’s expanded group stage has already produced a different scoring rhythm than in Qatar and Russia, while Formula 1’s new DRS-free aero rules have doubled overtakes on track. In tennis, doubling the seeded field at a Masters 1000 event is Cincinnati’s version of the same trend: a structural tweak designed to change outcomes, not just numbers on a bracket sheet.
