Novak Djokovic will play the Cincinnati Open for the first time since winning the title there in 2023, the 24-time Grand Slam champion announced Thursday in a video posted to the tournament’s social media channels.
The statement came six days after Djokovic withdrew from the National Bank Open in Montreal, and it settles what the men’s entry list could not — whether a player who now builds his seasons almost entirely around the four majors would add a Masters 1000 event before New York.
A season built on four events. Cincinnati will be Djokovic’s sixth tournament of 2026 and only his third outside the Grand Slams. He opened the year at the Australian Open, beating Jannik Sinner in five sets before losing the final to Carlos Alcaraz. He then lost in the fourth round at Indian Wells to Jack Draper, fell in his opening match in Rome to Dino Prizmic, went out in the third round at Roland Garros and reached the Wimbledon semi-finals, where Sinner beat him again. His season record stands at 14-5.
Inside that record sits the figure that makes the Cincinnati entry significant. Across his two non-major events this year, Djokovic has won two matches and lost two. He arrived at both Melbourne and Wimbledon without playing a single warm-up event, and reached a final and a semi-final anyway. Cincinnati breaks that method. It will be the first tune-up tournament he has played before a major all season.
A venue that is not a neutral choice. Djokovic holds a 45-12 record at the Cincinnati Open, with titles in 2018, 2020 and 2023 and five runner-up finishes before the first of them. The 2018 win over Roger Federer made him the first man to complete the career Golden Masters, the full set of nine Masters 1000 titles. The tournament says he has won his last 10 matches there.
The most recent of those was the 2023 final, in which he saved a championship point to beat Alcaraz 5-7, 7-6(7), 7-6(4) in three hours and 49 minutes. He described it Thursday as among the best Masters 1000 finals of his career. He went to Flushing Meadows from that match and won the US Open.
The dates, precisely. Parts of the coverage have placed the start of the tournament on Aug. 8. That is Community Weekend, the event’s fan programming, which runs Aug. 8-9. Competition begins with two days of qualifying on Aug. 11 and 12. The main draw starts Aug. 13 at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio, and the singles finals are on Sunday, Aug. 23, moved from Monday for this edition. Both singles draws hold 96 players, with the top 32 seeds byed into the second round. Seedings have not been published.
What the rest of the field looks like. Sinner, the world No. 1 and back-to-back Wimbledon champion, and Alcaraz, the defending Cincinnati champion, both appear on the men’s entry list, though neither has made a personal statement of the kind Djokovic issued Thursday. Alcaraz has not played since April because of a right wrist injury that cost him Roland Garros and Wimbledon.
Djokovic climbed two places to No. 5 in the ATP rankings on July 27 with 3,760 points. He turned 39 in May and is chasing a 25th major title in New York at the end of the North American hard-court swing
