Maja Chwalinska arrived at Roland Garros in May 2026 ranked No. 114, entered in qualifying, with six tour-level main-draw wins in her whole career. She left three weeks later as the runner-up. Along the way she became the first qualifier to reach the Roland Garros final, and only the second in the Open Era to reach a Grand Slam final, after Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open, according to the WTA.
Paris, 2026
She won three qualifying matches and then beat Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen 6-4, 6-0 in the first round. No. 23 seed Elise Mertens went by the same score, then Maria Sakkari 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 and Frenchwoman Diane Parry 6-3, 6-2. In the quarterfinals she beat No. 22 seed Anna Kalinskaya 7-6(3), 6-3, and in the semifinals No. 25 seed Diana Shnaider 7-6(4), 6-4, with 32 winners to 17 unforced errors, per the WTA.
“It’s like a dream, honestly,” she said in her on-court interview after the semifinal. “I don’t know what’s going on.” It was her first tour-level final of any kind. The WTA noted that only Venus Williams and Raducanu had previously reached their first WTA-level final at a major in the Open Era.
The final went to Mirra Andreeva, 6-3, 6-2. Chwalinska led 3-2 in the first set before Andreeva won nine games in a row. “I felt like I have no weapon against her today,” Chwalinska said afterwards. “She definitely handled wind much better than me, and she played so smart.” The run was worth €1.4 million in prize money and took her from No. 114 to a career-high No. 21.
Ten years to get there
Chwalinska was born on 11 October 2001 in Dąbrowa Górnicza, according to the WTA, and started playing at seven. As a junior she partnered Iga Swiatek, a fellow 2001-born Pole. The pair won European junior doubles titles at under-14 and under-16 level and reached the 2017 Australian Open girls’ doubles final, losing to Bianca Andreescu and Carson Branstine.
She made her professional debut in November 2015, a month after turning 14, and reached the Top 200 in August 2019 at 17, after a 15-match winning streak that took in three ITF titles in Poland. Then the setbacks came. In 2021, after losing in Wimbledon qualifying, she stepped away from the tour for several months; she later revealed she had been dealing with depression.
Her first tour-level main draw came at Wimbledon in 2022, through qualifying. She beat Katerina Siniakova 6-0, 7-5 for her first Top 100 win before losing to Alison Riske-Amritraj in the second round. That summer she climbed to No. 153, and then right knee surgery ended her season. She came back in 2023 with post-surgery viral complications and had fallen to No. 532 by August.
The rebuild went through the WTA 125 level. She won titles at Florianópolis in 2024, Montreux in 2025 and Oeiras in April 2026, where she beat former Top 10 player Beatriz Haddad Maia 6-0, 6-4 on the way. In a 2025 Billie Jean King Cup qualifier she held five set points in the opening set against Elina Svitolina before losing 7-6(4), 6-3. “It was not an easy match,” Svitolina said. “I was playing well but all the credit to Maja, she was playing amazing tennis.”
In February 2026 she qualified for Cluj-Napoca and reached her first tour-level quarterfinal. In May she travelled to Rome as a possible alternate and narrowly missed the qualifying cut. She went to Paris with a 20-9 record for the season.
How she plays
Chwalinska is a left-hander, 1.64 metres tall by the WTA’s measure, and her game has never been built on size. The WTA describes the reputation she built among close followers of the sport as one founded on variety, touch and court craft. Her own account of grass, given in Paris, was that her slice and touch suit the surface and that she can cover the court well on it.
After the final
The Wimbledon entry list had closed while she was still No. 114, so the All England Club gave her a wild card. By the draw she had risen high enough to be seeded 20th. Leading qualifier Mananchaya Sawangkaew 6-2, 5-2 in the first round, she injured her ankle while serving for the match, according to Olympics.com, and lost 2-6, 7-5, 6-2.
At the US Open she drew Taylor Townsend in the first round and lost 6-2, 6-3.
Grand Slam best results
- Australian Open: first round (2025, as a qualifier)
- Roland Garros: final (2026, as a qualifier)
- Wimbledon: second round (2022, as a qualifier)
- US Open: first round (2026)
Tour-level singles titles: none. WTA 125 singles titles: three — Florianópolis 2024, Montreux 2025, Oeiras 2026.
Season Snapshot — 24 September 2026
Ranking: No. 25, per the WTA; career high No. 21, reached after Roland Garros. Coach: Jaroslav Machovsky.
This week she is the No. 5 seed at the Singapore Tennis Open, a WTA 500 where only the top four seeds received first-round byes. She beat Sramkova in the first round and Oleksandra Oliynykova 6-0, 6-1 in 59 minutes in the second, and was drawn to face No. 4 seed Elise Mertens, whom she beat in Paris, in the quarterfinals. That match was scheduled after this snapshot was written. Her 2026 season also includes a win over Cristina Bucsa in Cincinnati.
This snapshot is dated and will change. The career record above does not.
More: Chwalinska becomes the first qualifier to reach the French Open final, Grand Slam Qualifying Explained, the Roland Garros Guide, and the full ATP and WTA player index.
