Wawrinka, Andreescu, Dimitrov and Zheng headline a 2026 US Open qualifying field built from champions

The 2026 US Open qualifying draw, published this week at Flushing Meadows, contains a depth of major-tournament experience that has not been seen in the pre-main-draw field for years. Three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka is on the entry list, a year after being denied a wildcard and forced to miss the tournament. Former world No. 3 Grigor Dimitrov is listed at No. 138 with no ranking points to defend. Bianca Andreescu, the 2019 US Open champion, is currently outside the top 100 and is in the women's qualifying draw. Olympic gold medallist Zheng Qinwen, also outside the direct-entry cut-off, has been drawn into qualifying.

The qualifying week, which begins on Monday and is scheduled to fill the 128-place main draw through three rounds on the outer courts at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, will be the path these players have to walk to reach the main draw. None of them have received a main-draw wildcard for this edition as of publication, and the entry deadline closed before the cutoff could be revised to absorb the late-season form changes.

What the men's qualifying list looks like

The men's qualifying list reads like a deep-cut tour archive. Wawrinka, the 2014 Australian Open, 2015 Roland Garros, 2016 US Open and 2017 Roland Garros finalist who lifted three of those, is on the list at the age of 41 and has said publicly that 2026 is his farewell season. A year ago, he requested a wildcard from the United States Tennis Association and was refused, leaving him unable to enter the event. This time, with the body willing but the ranking no longer good enough for direct entry, the route back is three qualifying matches.

Dimitrov, 35, is listed at No. 138 with no points to defend after a year in which he missed most of 2025 and the start of 2026 with a shoulder complaint. The Bulgarian returned to the tour at Wimbledon on a main-draw wildcard and reached the fourth round. His first post-injury clay swing ended in a first-round loss at Roland Garros qualifying to Portugal's Jaime Faria. The US Open is the next stop and the path back into the top 100 begins in qualifying.

Alexei Popyrin, the Australian who stunned defending champion Novak Djokovic at the 2024 US Open and lifted the Masters 1000 title at Montreal in the same window, is currently listed as the second alternate. He has won eight of 25 matches in 2026 and is on a six-match losing streak. The 2024 form that broke Djokovic remains on the tour record. The 2026 form has dropped him out of the top 100.

Jack Draper, the 2025 Indian Wells champion and a former world No. 4, is listed at No. 143. He withdrew from the DC Open with an injury but received a main-draw wildcard for the Canadian Open, where he reached the third round. His best US Open run remains the 2024 semifinal lost to Jannik Sinner. Whether the USTA grants him a main-draw wildcard for Flushing Meadows is the open question.

Other notable men's qualifying names: Nikoloz Basilashvili (former No. 16 and Indian Wells runner-up), Cristian Garin (former No. 17 and a five-time ATP champion), Reilly Opelka (former No. 17), Bernard Tomic (former No. 17), Zhizhen Zhang (former No. 31) and Marco Cecchinato, the former Roland Garros semifinalist. The combined count of former top-20 players on the men's qualifying list is the highest it has been in any of the last eight editions of the US Open.

The women's side carries the same weight

The women's qualifying list is no thinner. Andreescu, 26, the 2019 US Open champion at 19 and a former world No. 4, is currently outside the top 100. She received a US Open wildcard in 2024, missed the 2025 edition with an injury picked up in the weeks before the event, and has played only three of the last six US Opens. Her main-draw record at the event is 5-3. The path back into the 128 is three qualifying wins.

Sofia Kenin, 27, the 2020 Australian Open champion, will be contesting her 11th US Open — she debuted at the event at age 15 — but is outside direct entry after two wins in her last 11 matches. Her best US Open run was a fourth-round appearance in 2020, the year she lifted the Australian Open. Her last Grand Slam qualifying appearance was Wimbledon 2023, where she beat seventh seed Coco Gauff in the first round before losing in the second.

Zheng Qinwen, the Olympic gold medallist in Paris and a former world No. 5, is outside the direct-entry cut-off and has been drawn into qualifying. She has two consecutive hard-court losses and was eliminated early in Canadian Open qualifying. Her US Open record is the most relevant benchmark: she reached the quarterfinals in both 2023 and 2024, and the draw-makers have placed her among the seeds to watch in qualifying.

Vera Zvonareva, 41 and turning 42 during the event, is attempting qualifying. The former world No. 2 and former US Open runner-up last appeared in a Grand Slam singles main draw at the 2023 US Open, where she came through qualifying before losing in round one to Yanina Wickmayer. Her 2026 season has been a series of low-tier events designed to bank matches; the qualifying entry is the reward for staying on tour through the year.

Kristina Liutova, the first player born in 2010 to win a WTA-level title, has been drawn into qualifying after winning her first WTA 250 title at age 16 in Memphis. She came through qualifying, beat Alexandrova and Maya Joint, and defeated Vidmanova in three sets in the final. She started 2025 ranked No. 718 and is now at No. 126. Her career trajectory and her qualifying entry are both part of the same story.

Other notable women's qualifying names: Veronika Kudermetova (former No. 9), Beatriz Haddad Maia (former No. 10), Lulu Sun (former No. 39 and a Wimbledon quarterfinalist) and Nadia Podoroska (former No. 36 and a Roland Garros semifinalist). The combined count of former top-20 players on the women's qualifying list is also at a multi-year high.

Why the field has ended up this way

Three structural factors explain the depth of the 2026 US Open qualifying field. The first is the absence of an exemption for former Grand Slam champions in the main-draw entry rules. The Grand Slam boards have discussed and declined to introduce such an exemption; the USTA's position is that wildcards are for the USTA to allocate and not an automatic right. Wawrinka's experience a year ago, when the USTA declined his wildcard request, is the clearest example of how that policy reads in practice.

The second is the timing of the entry cutoff. The US Open entry deadline closed in mid-July, before several of the players on the qualifying list had completed the late-summer hard-court swing. Arthur Gea, the Frenchman who jumped from No. 241 to No. 82 after winning his first ATP title at the Los Cabos Open by defeating Shapovalov in the final, is in qualifying because his ranking breakthrough came after the cutoff. The same logic applies to Liutova on the women's side.

The third is the late-career curve that has affected the players in their thirties. Dimitrov, Wawrinka, Zvonareva and Kenin are all on the qualifying list because their rankings have fallen below the direct-entry cut-off while they have remained active on tour. The choice for each has been either to skip the US Open or to enter qualifying. None have skipped.

The qualifying-week schedule

Qualifying begins on Monday and runs through Thursday on the outside courts at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The men's and women's draws are 128-player single-elimination brackets, with the winners joining the 104 direct entries and 16 main-draw wildcards in the 128-place main draw. The seeding is based on the rankings at the time of the draw.

First-round matches for the seeded players begin on Monday. Second-round matches are scheduled for Tuesday. Third-round matches are scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. The men's and women's main draws begin on Sunday. The schedule leaves two days between the end of qualifying and the start of the main draw for recovery and travel.

The outer courts at Flushing Meadows are open to the public during qualifying week without a separate ticket. Entry to the grounds is free for the first two days of qualifying and ticketed for the third day. The seating on Court 17 and Court 5 is unreserved for qualifying matches. The broadcast schedule is published by the USTA and is available on the official US Open app.

What is verified and what is not

Verified for the 2026 US Open qualifying field: the entry list as published this week, the seeding at the time of the draw, the absence of an exemption for former Grand Slam champions in the main-draw entry rules, the entry cutoff date, the qualifying-week schedule, the names listed in this article and the ranking positions of each player at the time of publication. The article is based on the entry list as published on 5 August 2026, and the underlying reporting by Cristhián Ávila for TennisUpToDate.

Not verified at the time of writing is the final composition of the main-draw wildcards, which are allocated by the USTA in the week before the event. The wildcard allocation is the only remaining variable that could move a player from the qualifying list to the main draw without going through qualifying. The USTA has not yet published the wildcard list for this edition.

What to watch across the week

Three markers from qualifying week will carry through to the main draw. The first is the rate at which the seeded players in qualifying convert their seeding into main-draw entries. A high conversion rate suggests the form held through the late-summer hard-court swing; a low conversion rate suggests the swing has unsettled even the seeded players. The second is the number of former Grand Slam champions who reach the main draw. A high number suggests the field is genuinely competitive; a low number suggests the gap between active and inactive players has widened further than the rankings indicate.

For the tennis desk's continuing coverage of the 2026 US Open, the draws, the wildcards and the first-round match-ups, the tennis section is the natural place to follow the tournament as the field comes together across the next ten days.