The last month of the junior season runs through Mexico and Florida, and it starts on clay in Yucatán. J500 Mérida, played as the Copa Mundial Yucatán, opens the run at the Club Campestre de Yucatán from 23 to 28 November 2026. The boys and girls who go deep there move on to Bradenton a week later and to the Orange Bowl a week after that, with the year-end junior ranking settled at the end of it.
The 2026 event is the 39th Copa Mundial Yucatán. It is one of the ITF’s J500 events, the highest grade on the junior tour below the four junior Grand Slams and the year-end finals.
Dates and Venue
- Main draw: Monday 23 November to Saturday 28 November 2026.
- Qualifying: the weekend before the main draw. Qualifying sign-in closes at 18:00 local time on Friday 20 November.
- Finals: doubles finals on the afternoon of Friday 27 November, singles finals on the afternoon of Saturday 28 November.
- Venue: Club Campestre de Yucatán, Mérida, Mexico, with nine courts.
- Surface: outdoor clay.
Clay is the thread through the whole stretch. The 18s at the IMG Academy championships in Bradenton (30 November to 6 December) and the Orange Bowl in Fort Lauderdale (7 to 13 December) are also played on clay, so a junior who commits to the three weeks plays every match of the run on the same surface.
Draws and Format
The boys’ and girls’ events are the same size: a 48-player singles main draw, a 48-player singles qualifying draw and a 24-team doubles draw. The singles main draw is a straight elimination draw. Forty-eight is the minimum singles main-draw size the ITF sets for a J500, and because a 48-line draw sits inside a 64-line bracket, 16 players go straight into the second round on byes, a detail worth knowing when reading the draw sheet.
Players who lose in the last round of qualifying are first in line for any late openings as lucky losers. Unlike J300 events and below, a J500 keeps no places for younger local players accepted on their World Tennis Number, so entry rests on the junior ranking, qualifying and wild cards.
Ranking Points
A J500 is named for its champion’s points. The singles table runs:
| Round reached | Singles points | Doubles points (per player) |
|---|---|---|
| Winner | 500 | 375 |
| Runner-up | 350 | 262 |
| Semifinal | 250 | 187 |
| Quarterfinal | 150 | 112 |
| Last 16 | 90 | 67 |
| Last 32 | 45 | — |
A junior Grand Slam title is worth 1,000 points, so a Mérida title is worth half a major on the junior ranking. Coming this late in the year, those points weigh heavily on the year-end list, which is the one that decides the pro entry places described below.
Entry and Deadlines
Mérida’s deadlines fall on Tuesdays at 14:00 GMT. In 2026 the singles entry deadline was Tuesday 3 November and the withdrawal deadline is Tuesday 10 November, 13 days before the main draw. Withdrawing after that deadline can bring a penalty under the junior regulations.
Where Mérida Sits in the Junior Calendar
Mérida has been a top-grade junior event for years. Under the old grading it was a Grade A, the sixth of seven held in 2022, and it carried that status into the J500 grade when the ITF renamed its categories for 2023. In 2025 it was again the sixth of seven J500s, with the Orange Bowl as the last.
That position is what gives the week its edge. The year-end ITF junior ranking sets who gets main-draw places at professional events the following season through the ITF’s Junior Accelerator Programme, a route that runs alongside the PIF ATP Next Gen Accelerator, and it decides which girls earn extra tournaments under the WTA’s age rule. For a junior sitting just outside a cut-off in late November, Mérida, Bradenton and the Orange Bowl are the last three chances to move.
The junior autumn also carries its team and year-end events: the World Tennis Tour Junior Finals and the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup Junior Finals. After the Orange Bowl, the leading juniors turn to professional ITF and Challenger events and the short off-season before January.
Recent Champions
2025. Brazil’s Luis Guto Miguel, seeded third, took the boys’ title by beating Keaton Hance of the United States, the seventh seed, 6-1, 6-1. Hance had knocked out the top seed, Yannick Theodor Alexandrescou, in the semifinals. Miguel became the first Brazilian to win a J500 title in a decade. The girls’ final was the opposite of a rout. Top seed Alena Kovackova of Czechia lost the first set to Brazil’s Victoria Luiza Barros in a tiebreak, then won 6-7(1), 7-5, 6-2 in three hours and five minutes. It was the only set Kovackova dropped all week.
2024. France’s Thomas Faurel won the boys’ title without dropping a set, beating Colombia’s Miguel Tobon 6-3, 6-1 in the final. Bulgaria’s Elizara Yaneva beat Serbia’s Luna Vujovic 6-4, 6-3 for the girls’ title. Both reached career-high junior rankings on the back of the week.
2021. Brenda Fruhvirtova of the Czech Republic won the girls’ title and Mili Poljicak of Croatia the boys’.
The tournament’s own records list famous names among earlier champions. Global Tennis News has not yet matched that list against ITF draw records, so it is not reproduced here.
Season Snapshot — 9 November 2026
- The 2026 entry deadline has passed and the acceptance list is posted on the ITF tournament page. The withdrawal deadline is Tuesday 10 November, 14:00 GMT.
- The opening ceremony is set for 7pm on Monday 23 November on centre court.
- The 2025 champions left Mérida as junior world No. 10s: Miguel at a career high, Kovackova in the girls’ ranking.
- Seeds and the draw will be set closer to the event.
This snapshot is dated and will change. The career record above does not.
