The Next Gen ATP Finals is the season-ending event for the best young men on the ATP Tour: eight players, all aged 20 or under, playing round-robin groups and knockout rounds under scoring rules found nowhere else on the tour. The 2026 edition will be played at the PalaCalafiore in Reggio Calabria, Italy, from 9 to 13 December, with prize money of $2 million.
The move was announced on 9 September in New York by Angelo Binaghi, president of the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation, the ATP’s chief tour officer Andre Silva and Roberto Occhiuto, governor of the Calabria region. “The Next Gen ATP Finals have proven to be a powerful platform in shaping the future of men’s professional tennis,” Silva said.
Who Can Play
The event is for singles players aged 20 and under. The limit was 21 and under until 2024, when the ATP lowered it by a year. Eligibility runs by year of birth: in 2024, a player had to be born in 2004 or later.
How Players Qualify
Qualification runs through a separate points race, the PIF ATP Live Next Gen Race, which this year is billed as the Race To Reggio Calabria. It counts the season’s results for eligible players only. The field is the top eight singles players aged 20 and under, and in 2025 the top eight in the race qualified, with a race cut-off of 10 November. The 2026 cut-off date has not been published.
It has not always been eight straight from the race. In 2019 the field was the best seven qualifiers plus one wild card, and the wild card went to an 18-year-old Italian, Jannik Sinner, who won the title. The senior equivalent works on similar race lines; GTN’s Race to Turin explainer covers how the Nitto ATP Finals field is decided.
The Format
The eight players are split into two groups of four, and each plays the other three in his group. The top two in each group reach the semifinals, where the winner of one group plays the runner-up of the other. Group ties are broken by number of wins, then head-to-head, then percentages of sets and games won, then the PIF ATP Rankings.
The Scoring Rules
The scoring is what makes the event different. Under the rules for the 2025 edition, every match is best of five sets, and each set is first to four games with a two-game margin, with a tie-break to seven points at 3-3. Every game uses no-ad scoring. The 2026 rules have not yet been published.
The clock runs tighter too. Under the 2025 rules, the warm-up is three minutes, players have up to eight seconds between first and second serve, and the time between points is 15 seconds when the previous point lasted fewer than three shots and 25 seconds otherwise. There is no change of ends after the first game; players sit for 90 seconds after the third game and again at 3-2, change ends every six points in a tie-break, and get 90 seconds between sets instead of the usual 120. Fans may move around the stands during the first three games of a set.
A Testing Ground
The event has been used to try ideas before the rest of the tour adopts them. Live electronic line calling, video review and the integration of data from wearable devices were all tested at the Next Gen ATP Finals and later adopted across the ATP Tour. The 2019 edition also ran a 25-second shot clock and allowed in-match coaching, years before the tour’s current coaching rules.
Where It Has Been Played
Milan staged the first five editions, in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022. The event was not held in 2020 because of COVID-19. Jeddah hosted it from 2023 to 2025, and Reggio Calabria takes it over in 2026.
Champions
- 2025: Learner Tien d. Alexander Blockx 4-3(4), 4-2, 4-1
- 2024: Joao Fonseca d. Learner Tien 2-4, 4-3(8), 4-0, 4-2
- 2023: Hamad Medjedovic d. Arthur Fils 3-4(6), 4-1, 4-2, 3-4(9), 4-1
- 2022: Brandon Nakashima d. Jiri Lehecka
- 2021: Carlos Alcaraz d. Sebastian Korda
- 2019: Jannik Sinner d. Alex de Minaur
- 2018: Stefanos Tsitsipas d. Alex de Minaur
- 2017: Hyeon Chung d. Andrey Rublev
Medjedovic, ranked No. 110 when he won, is the lowest-ranked champion and won the first five-set final. Tien was the third top seed to win the title, after Tsitsipas in 2018 and Alcaraz in 2021. GTN’s explainer on the PIF ATP Next Gen Accelerator covers the separate programme that gives young players extra entries into tour events.
Race Snapshot — as of 5 October 2026
The top 10 of the PIF ATP Live Race To Reggio Calabria after the week ending 5 October: 1. Rafael Jodar 2,509 points; 2. Joao Fonseca 1,200; 3. Martin Landaluce 748; 4. Federico Cina 358; 5. Joel Schwaerzler 327; 6. Darwin Blanch 326; 7. Rei Sakamoto 321; 8. Diego Dedura 292; 9. Moise Kouame 287; 10. Jan Kumstat 283.
Cina and Sakamoto both came through qualifying into the Shanghai Masters main draw. Cina lost his first-round match to Alex Molcan 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, and Sakamoto beat Marco Trungelliti 6-3, 7-5 to set up a second-round match against Andrey Rublev. Jodar is seeded 12th in Shanghai, and Landaluce plays Jan-Lennard Struff in the first round.
This snapshot is dated and will change. The rules and the list of champions above do not.
