The US Open ticket rush began Tuesday, with a batch of face-value tickets selling out quickly and leaving only expensive resale seats.
The first tickets for the 2026 tournament were available through the American Express presale Tuesday at 9 a.m. ET.
One X/Twitter user, AlwaysSunnyNYC, posted a screenshot showing 430,298 people ahead of them in the queue for the men’s singles final at Arthur Ashe Stadium. (The stadium fits about 23,000 people, the largest of any tennis venue.)
Another, Jason Deutchman, said he saw tickets for the same seats that were four times more expensive than last year—going from $600 to $2,400.
A one-day grounds pass ticket at face value ranges from $65 to $135, depending on the day. But only “Verified Resale Tickets” are available on Ticketmaster, and currently range from about $235 to $450, before taxes and fees. Tickets for the men’s singles final on Sept. 13 are going for as much as $30,000 on the platform.
The average ticket price for the entire 2025 US Open was $529, an 18% increase from 2024, according to SeatGeek. This year’s average ticket price is $617 so far.
The average men’s and women’s singles final ticket is $1,732 and $1,230, respectively, up from $1,615 and $825 last year.
It’s worth noting ticket prices are likely to drop closer to the tournament, and SeatGeek tells Front Office Sports that early ticket buyers “skew toward premium sessions.”
But rising ticket prices have not stopped fans from attending the lone Grand Slam in the U.S. Last year, the US Open drew a tournament-record 1.14 million attendees last year, up 9% from 2024.
In a statement to FOS, the USTA said it continues to “evaluate how to optimize fan access to the US Open.”
“Demand for US Open tickets continues to be extraordinary, as it has been for the last several years. For the third year in a row, the majority of Amex Presale tickets — which includes tickets for every session in every stadium at the US Open — sold out within the first few hours of going on sale.”
The USTA said a number of the resale tickets may be due to “full-series tournament subscribers” (similar to season-ticket holders): “Fans seeing tickets available via resale during the presale period may be seeing tickets resold from full-series tournament subscribers. It is legal in New York State for those ticket holders to resell their tickets.”
The US Open has 10 ticket plans ranging from three-day plans early in the tournament to two-week-long tickets for the main draw Aug. 30 to Sept. 13 at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The USTA also highlighted there will be free grounds admission for eight days of the tournament: The seven days of qualifying week before the main draw (Aug. 23–29) and an “Open for All Day” on Sept. 10. (That is the day of the women’s semifinals, but there will be limited matches that day because it is late on the second main draw week.)
Ticketmaster said it did not make any decisions about how US Open tickets are sold, but that generally, it was blocking 20 billion bots a month in an effort to stymie automated reselling.
American Express did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The general public sale for the US Open starts Thursday at 12 p.m. ET.
