A grounds pass to the opening day of the US Open main draw carries a face value of $65. With the tournament’s first singles matches 11 days away, the cheapest seat available for the opening session at Arthur Ashe Stadium is running around $327, and the cheapest opening-session seat in Louis Armstrong Stadium is closer to $466. Even a grounds pass, the entry-level ticket that buys access to the outer courts and no reserved seat at all, is trading well above $300.
The distance between those two numbers is the story, and it is not a story about what the USTA charges. Face value for a one-day grounds pass this year runs from $65 to $135 depending on the date, a scale that sits within reach of an ordinary day out in New York. The difficulty is that almost none of those tickets are still being sold at face value. The primary market cleared in May, and what is left is resale.
That was visible from the first morning of sales. When the American Express presale opened on May 26, fans who waited through Ticketmaster queues reported reaching the seating chart only to find verified resale inventory, priced at roughly $235 to $450 before taxes and fees. Listings for the men’s singles final on Sept. 13 reached as high as $30,000. The general on-sale followed on May 28, and the marquee sessions went quickly — a pattern familiar to anyone who watched the backlash over pricing for Roger Federer’s exhibition night earlier this summer.
The USTA has addressed the resale question directly, noting that much of the inventory surfacing during the presale window belonged to full-series subscribers — the tournament’s equivalent of season-ticket holders — releasing dates they did not intend to use. It is “legal in New York State for those ticket holders to resell their tickets,” the association said.
The trajectory predates this year. The average ticket price across the 2025 US Open was $529, an 18% rise on 2024, according to SeatGeek. Early-round grounds passes that historically sat in a $25 to $60 band now open at $65 at face value before resale touches them at all. The rise has arrived alongside a season in which players have pressed the majors hard on how tournament revenue is divided, an argument that has moved at different speeds at each of the four Slams. What a spectator pays at the gate sits at the other end of that same ledger.
Against all of that, the tournament has also made itself more accessible than it has ever been. Eight of the 22 days carry free grounds admission — the seven days of Fan Week from Aug. 23 to Aug. 29, and Open for All Day on Thursday, Sept. 10. That is the most in the event’s near-150-year history, covering qualifying, player practices, Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day and the qualifying rounds of the mixed doubles championship. Adults 18 and over now need a free Fan Access Pass, new for 2026.
The free days do real work, but they do not close the gap. Seven of the eight fall before a single main-draw singles ball is struck. The eighth, Sept. 10, is women’s semifinal day, when the grounds and outer courts open to anyone while the Ashe session that night stays ticketed. A fan who wants to watch Aryna Sabalenka defend her title in a stadium is not covered by any of it.
For anyone still trying to attend a main-draw session, the next 11 days are unlikely to bring relief. Resale pricing tends to firm rather than soften as a draw takes shape, and this year’s demand signals are unusually unsettled. The fitness of both Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner remains unresolved with the entry list still moving, and the market could turn on either name in the days before the draw is made.
That leaves three realistic options: a free day, where the tennis is qualifying and practice rather than main draw; Sept. 10, the one free date when the tournament is at full strength; or the broadcast schedule, which carries every court. For those going in person, the 7 train remains the cheapest part of the day by some distance.
Both things are true at once. The 2026 US Open will be the most open version of itself the tournament has ever staged, with more free days than any edition before it. It will also be, on any day that carries a ticket, the most expensive.
