Every Grand Slam singles draw of 128 has eight wild cards, and at three of the four majors two of them in each draw go to players chosen by a partner federation. Tennis Australia, the French Tennis Federation (FFT) and the USTA swap main-draw places with one another, so an American man and woman play the Australian Open and Roland Garros on the USTA’s nomination, a French pair play Melbourne and New York on the FFT’s, and an Australian pair play Paris and New York on Tennis Australia’s. These are the reciprocal wild cards.
Wild cards in general, and who tends to get them, are covered in how wild cards work in tennis and how wild cards are awarded and who really gets them. This page deals only with the exchange between the majors.
What the Grand Slam rules say
The Grand Slam Rulebook defines wild cards as “Players who are included in the draw at the sole discretion of the individual Grand Slam Tournament”. Unless otherwise agreed, a 128-player singles main draw has eight of them, and a 128-player qualifying draw has nine. Wild cards must be named when the draw is made, they may be seeded, and a player who has competed in a tournament’s qualifying cannot then be named as a wild card in its main draw. There is no limit on how many wild cards one player may receive. How the rest of the draw is filled is in Grand Slam draw and rules explained and how tennis entry lists work.
The rulebook says nothing about an exchange. The swap is an arrangement between the federations that run three of the events, and each tournament’s discretion is how it is carried out.
Three two-way agreements
The exchange is not one three-way pact but three separate pairings, each described by the federations involved.
- USTA and Tennis Australia (Australian Open and US Open). The USTA says the two federations “have a reciprocal agreement in which main-draw singles wild cards for the 2027 Australian Open and US Open will be exchanged.”
- USTA and FFT (Roland Garros and US Open). The USTA says the USTA and FFT “have a reciprocal agreement to exchange main-draw wild cards for the 2026 French Open and US Open.” The FFT describes the same reciprocity agreement from its side.
- FFT and Tennis Australia (Roland Garros and Australian Open). The FFT describes a reciprocity agreement with Tennis Australia providing for an exchange of wild cards between Roland Garros and the Australian Open, and says the exchange also covers a place in the women’s qualifying draw.
In practice each federation sends one man and one woman into each partner’s main draws, which takes two of the eight wild cards in each singles draw. At Roland Garros in 2026, six of the women’s main-draw wild cards went to home players and two to the reciprocal arrangements.
Why Wimbledon is different
Wimbledon’s wild cards are decided by the All England Club, which invites the LTA to make recommendations. The published exchange agreements involve only the other three majors, and the LTA’s own explanation names only those three as swapping wild cards. Of the 15 main-draw singles wild cards Wimbledon named on 18 June 2026, 12 went to British players and none to an Australian, French or American player. The Championships themselves are covered in the Wimbledon guide.
How each federation chooses
USTA: a points race. The USTA runs a Wild Card Challenge for each major, and its winners take the reciprocal places at the Australian Open and Roland Garros. American players collect ranking points, qualifying and main draw both counting, over a set number of events in a five-week window on the surface of the major in question: hard courts for Melbourne, red clay and Har-Tru for Paris. Players who already have direct entry are not eligible, and the place passes to the next American. The same format decides one of the USTA’s own wild cards for the US Open, explained in US Open Wild Card Challenge 2026. The rules change from year to year; for the 2026 US Open, results at Cincinnati did not count.
FFT: a federation decision. The FFT announces its choices as decisions of the federation, with no points race and no published criteria. Its announcements set out the players’ recent results. For the 2026 US Open it chose Gael Monfils and Leolia Jeanjean, as covered in Monfils gets France’s last US Open invitation.
Tennis Australia: no published method. Tennis Australia awards its reciprocal places without a published selection process for the overseas majors. Its own Australian Open wild cards for Australian players are a separate matter, and so is the Asia-Pacific Wildcard Play-off, an event in which non-Australian players from the region play for Australian Open main-draw places. That play-off is not part of the exchange.
Qualifying places too
The swap reaches into qualifying as well. The ninth and last women’s qualifying wild card at the 2026 Australian Open went to the French junior Ksenia Efremova “as part of a reciprocal arrangement”, and Roland Garros 2026 also gave a women’s qualifying wild card to an Australian under its agreement with Tennis Australia. How the qualifying rounds work is in Grand Slam qualifying explained.
Reciprocal wild cards in 2026
- Australian Open 2026: Patrick Kypson and Elizabeth Mandlik (USTA; Kypson through the Wild Card Challenge); Kyrian Jacquet and Tiantsoa Sarah Rakotomanga Rajaonah (FFT).
- Roland Garros 2026: Nishesh Basavareddy and Akasha Urhobo (USTA, winners of the Roland Garros Wild Card Challenge with 112 and 161 points); Adam Walton and Emerson Jones, then 17 (Tennis Australia).
- US Open 2026: Gael Monfils and Leolia Jeanjean (FFT); Dane Sweeny and Taylah Preston (Tennis Australia). Sweeny received the place after Alexei Popyrin, first named as a wild card, moved into the main draw directly. The full US Open list is in US Open 2026 wild cards.
Season Snapshot — 11 November 2026
The 2027 Australian Open runs from 11 to 31 January. The USTA’s Australian Open Wild Card Challenge decides the American reciprocal places. The women’s race ran from the week of 5 October to the week of 2 November at W35 level and above on hard courts and carpet, counting a maximum of three tournaments. The men’s race runs from the week of 19 October to the week of 16 November at M25 level and above, counting a maximum of four. Ties go to the better singles ranking on the Monday after the Challenge ends. No winner had been announced as of 11 November. Last season the FFT named its Australian Open picks on 16 December.
This snapshot is dated and will change. The career record above does not.
