The cheapest week of the US Open begins Sunday at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, and for the first time the people walking through the gates will need something they did not need in previous years: a pass.
Fan Week runs from Sunday through Saturday, Aug. 29, and covers the singles qualifying tournament, the expanded mixed doubles championship, open practice sessions on the field courts and Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day. Grounds admission across all seven days costs nothing. But the USTA now states on its Fan Access Pass site that “Adults will be required to have a free Fan Access Pass,” a registration step that did not exist when fans could simply arrive at the turnstiles. Only adults need to register. Minors under 18 may enter alongside a registered adult, and one registration covers the full week.
The requirement has already produced confusion in the days before the gates open. A notice on the USTA’s Fan Access Pass hub reading that RSVPs are closed due to high demand has circulated this week as evidence that pass registration itself had shut, leaving fans to conclude that the free days were full. That is not what the notice covers. It sits beneath a heading for Fan Access Pass special experiences, and it applies to three specific events inside Fan Week: the Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day Stadium Show on Sunday at 11 a.m., the US Open Silent Disco on Monday at 7 p.m., and the US Open Block Party on Friday, Aug. 28, at 7 p.m. As of Saturday morning, the registration form for the Fan Access Pass itself remained open and accepting entries.
The distinction matters for anyone planning a trip this week. The pass is what gets a fan onto the grounds. The RSVP was a separate layer on top of it for three capacity-limited events, and the USTA’s own language notes that an RSVP never guaranteed entry in the first place, with admission to those events run first come, first served under capacity limits. Fans who missed the RSVP window have not lost access to Fan Week. They have lost a place in line for a stadium show, a disco and a block party.
What the pass does open up is the part of the fortnight that regulars have long argued is the best value in American tennis. Qualifying begins Monday and runs through Thursday on the field courts, with draws of 128 men and 128 women competing for the last 16 places in each singles main draw. Qualifiers are typically ranked between about No. 100 and No. 250, and the format has a history of producing consequential runs: Emma Raducanu came through this tournament in 2021 and went on to win the title. Practice schedules for the top seeds are posted each morning, which in a normal year is the only way to watch the game’s biggest names at close range without paying for a stadium seat.
Two of Fan Week’s headline attractions sit outside the free access. Roger Federer returns to Arthur Ashe Stadium on Tuesday for an exhibition alongside Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi and John McEnroe, his first appearance at Flushing Meadows since 2019 and his first as a Hall of Fame inductee. Stars of the Open follows on Thursday. Both require a separate ticket, as do the mixed doubles sessions staged in Ashe. The mixed doubles qualifying competition on Monday in the Grandstand is free with a pass.
The registration requirement lands in a year when the gap between the tournament’s free tier and its paid one has widened considerably. The USTA has committed a record total player compensation figure for 2026, and grounds passes for the main draw that carry a face value of $65 have been trading on the resale market at several times that. Against that backdrop, seven free days in August function as the tournament’s most direct answer to the argument that it has priced out ordinary fans. Adding a registration layer, even a free one, changes who reaches them.
Fan Week is seven of the eight free days on the 2026 calendar. The eighth is Open for All Day on Thursday, Sept. 10, in the second week of the main draw, when grounds admission is free again with men’s doubles semifinals, wheelchair tennis and junior matches around the site. The main draw begins Sunday, Aug. 30.
