While the leading women play the Wuhan Open in the week of 12 October, three other WTA events are being played that week in Lisbon, Mallorca and Rovereto. They are WTA 125 tournaments, the level that sits between the ITF World Tennis Tour and the WTA’s tour-level events, the WTA 250, 500 and WTA 1000. This explainer covers what a 125 is worth, how players get in, and which players are kept out, using the WTA’s rankings guide and its 2026 Official Rulebook.
What a WTA 125 is worth
The champion of a WTA 125 earns 125 ranking points in singles and 125 in doubles, according to the WTA. That places the level just above the ITF’s top tier, the W100, whose champion earns 100 points, and half a WTA 250, whose champion earns 250. Points fall away round by round below that.
How much a 125 result can help depends on where it lands in a player’s ranking. Up to 18 tournaments count in a WTA singles ranking: the four Grand Slams, a player’s best six results at combined WTA 1000s, her best result at a non-combined WTA 1000, and her next best seven results from WTA 1000, 500, 250, 125 and ITF events, the WTA says. A 125 result competes for one of those last seven places. GTN’s WTA rankings explainer covers the rest of the system.
How players get in
The entry bar is low. A player needs a WTA singles ranking of 500 or better to enter a WTA 1000 or 500, and 750 or better for a WTA 250, but any WTA singles ranking at the entry deadline is enough to enter a WTA 125, according to the rulebook. Doubles works the same way: any WTA singles or doubles ranking will do.
Every WTA 125 has four regular singles wild cards and one doubles wild card. Qualifying draws of eight or 16 players get two wild cards, and draws of 24 or 32 get four. A player may receive up to three singles wild cards into WTA 125 events in a calendar year, and those are counted separately from her wild cards at tour level. A player ranked in the top 10 at the wild card deadline may not accept one.
Who is kept out
The rules on who may not play a 125 are what separate it from the tour. A player ranked in the top 10 at a 125’s entry deadline may not enter it, accept a wild card into it or compete in it, in singles or doubles. Below that, the restrictions depend on what else is on the calendar that week.
- The same week as a WTA 1000. Any player who qualifies for main draw acceptance at the 1000 may not play the 125.
- The second week of a WTA 1000 or a Grand Slam. Players ranked 21 and below may enter. Players ranked 11 to 20 may not enter, but up to two of them may play on wild cards. A player who was in the big event must also have lost in every draw she played there by the 125’s qualifying sign-in deadline.
- The same week as a WTA 500 or 250. Players ranked 1 to 75 who qualify for main draw acceptance at that 500 or 250 may not play the 125.
- A week with no tour-level event, or the off-season. Players ranked 1 to 50 at the entry deadline may not enter. Up to four players ranked 21 to 50 may play on WTA-approved wild cards. For these weeks, the 125 gets two extra wild card places, called WTA 125 Exemption Wild Cards, reserved for players in that ranking band.
- The week of the WTA Finals. Players who qualify for the Finals, including the two confirmed alternates, may not play a 125 that week even if they withdraw from the Finals.
Who plays them
The level has grown quickly. The WTA said in 2025 that more than 50 WTA 125 tournaments were scheduled that year, more than double the number of just over three years earlier, with 24 events in the 2022 season. The 2025 events were spread across more than 20 countries on five continents and all three surfaces, some of them combined with ATP events, and carried more than $6 million in prize money, a record for the level, according to the WTA.
“The growth of the WTA 125 Circuit exemplifies the massive appeal and interest we are seeing in women’s tennis,” Portia Archer, the WTA’s chief executive, said in that 2025 announcement.
The fields mix players climbing from the ITF circuit with established players looking for matches. Naomi Osaka won her first clay-court title at the Saint-Malo 125 in 2025, according to the WTA. At the other end, 16-year-old Sun Xinran, the junior world No. 1 and US Open girls’ champion, had already played ITF and WTA 125 events before her tour-level debut as a wild card at the China Open last week, the WTA reported.
Some tournaments have used the level as a starting point. Rouen was a WTA 125 in 2022 and 2023 before it became a WTA 250 in 2024, and Guadalajara was a 125 event in 2019 before it went on to stage 250, 500 and 1000 tournaments and the 2021 WTA Finals, according to the WTA.
Season Snapshot: autumn 2026
Updated 8 October 2026. The WTA’s 2026 WTA 125 calendar, dated 25 September, lists these events for the rest of the year. Week of 12 October: Lisbon (clay), Mallorca (clay) and Rovereto (indoor hard). Week of 26 October: Courmayeur (indoor hard), Curitiba (clay) and Queretaro (clay). Week of 2 November: Cali (clay) and Luanda (hard). Week of 9 November: Sopo (clay). Week of 16 November: Colina (clay). Week of 23 November: Buenos Aires (clay). Week of 30 November: Angers (indoor hard) and Quito (clay). Week of 14 December: Limoges (indoor hard). Dates can change; the WTA calendar is the reference. This snapshot is dated and will change. The rules above do not, until the WTA amends them.
