Updated Thursday, Aug. 6: Felix Auger-Aliassime withdrew from Montreal on Wednesday with a back injury, the first seeded player to leave the men’s draw after the tournament had begun. The second seed said the pain arrived suddenly during training on Monday and that he was unable to serve when he tried to warm up on the day of his opening match. His place in the second round passed to French qualifier Titouan Droguet. He said he would undergo tests to establish how the injury develops; no decision on Cincinnati or the US Open has been announced. Two other Canadians had already left the draw, with Gabriel Diallo retiring against Luciano Darderi and Denis Shapovalov retiring against Zach Svajda, both on Tuesday. Full report: Auger-Aliassime goes out injured, and Montreal loses the top five.
Updated Tuesday, Aug. 4: Three further withdrawals were listed on the official Toronto main draw sheet released late Monday. Elisabetta Cocciaretto is out with a left thigh injury, Polina Kudermetova with a right knee injury and Eva Lys with a back injury. None of the three had been seeded. Their exits come with the main draw already under way in Toronto and the men’s event in Montreal running two days behind schedule after persistent rain.
The 2026 Canadian Open keeps shedding star power. Karolina Muchova, the Wimbledon runner-up and world No. 6, confirmed on Saturday that she will miss next month’s WTA 1000 event in Toronto after undergoing a minor operation. Her exit is the latest in a run of high-profile absences that has already stripped the tournament of its defending women’s champion and the biggest name on the men’s entry list.
Muchova shared the news in a brief post on social media. The Czech said the surgery had been a success and that she had begun her recovery, but that it would keep her off court for several weeks. She did not name the injury or offer a timeline for her return. Muchova had been due to appear in Toronto for the first time, a debut she said she had been looking forward to. “Recovery comes first,” she wrote.
The 29-year-old has spent much of her career fighting her own body. She reached the Wimbledon final this month, losing to compatriot Linda Nosková, and was runner-up at the 2023 French Open, but repeated wrist problems and other setbacks have interrupted almost every promising run. Her best week at this tournament came in Montreal in 2024, when she reached the fourth round. She is expected back in time for the US Open later in the summer, though she set no date herself.
Her withdrawal follows that of the defending champion. Victoria Mboko announced on 7 July that she would not play, having failed to recover from a knee injury sustained at Queen’s Club in June, when she slipped on the grass during a match against Karolina Plíšková. The Canadian tore the medial collateral ligament in her left knee, an injury that also ended her grass-court season and her planned doubles run alongside Serena Williams.
For Mboko the timing is cruel. The women’s event alternates between Montreal and Toronto each year, and in 2026 it is Toronto’s turn — the city the 19-year-old grew up beside. She won last year’s title in Montreal as an 18-year-old wildcard ranked outside the top 300, beating Coco Gauff, Elena Rybakina and, in the final, Naomi Osaka to announce herself on the world stage. Now ranked No. 10, she stands to forfeit the 1,000 ranking points that came with that breakthrough and faces a slide down the standings.
The men’s field in Montreal has since been hit far harder. Carlos Alcaraz is one of three leading names now missing, the Spaniard still working his way back from the right wrist injury that has kept him off court since the Barcelona Open in April. He will miss the first Masters 1000 event of the North American hard-court swing for a third straight year. Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic followed him out a week before the tournament, Tennis Canada confirming both withdrawals; Sinner said in a statement that the decision had been taken with his team to protect his health, while Djokovic gave no reason. It is the second year running that all three have skipped the event. Alexander Zverev headed the Montreal draw as top seed, with home favorite Felix Auger-Aliassime seeded second; neither survived the first week, Zverev beaten in the second round and Auger-Aliassime withdrawn. On the women’s side, Emma Raducanu is also absent as she manages a stress fracture in her right leg.
The withdrawals have now landed on both draws, and the Toronto list has continued to grow into the opening days of the tournament. Even with those gaps, the tournament retains real strength. Organizers pointed at launch to one of the deepest entry lists in the event’s history for the expanded 96-player format, though the men’s top order has thinned considerably since. But the thinning of the Toronto draw changes the shape of the women’s competition. With the champion gone and several seeds missing, the title looks unusually open, and the door widens for the next tier of contenders to make an early-summer statement.
The National Bank Open runs from 1 to 13 August, with the men in Montreal and the women in Toronto, before the tour moves on to Cincinnati and then the US Open. For a field that had hoped to showcase a Canadian defending her crown close to home and a Wimbledon finalist on debut, the tournament has instead become a story about who is missing.
