The Australian Open has announced a 16-percent increase in prize money for 2026, as the pressure from players for greater remuneration ramps up.

The increase takes the total prize pool to $ 111.5 million AUD ($ 75 million USD) and puts the first Grand Slam of the year ahead of Wimbledon, which offered $ 72.6 million in 2025. It remains behind the U.S. Open’s $ 85 million in the same year, a Grand Slam record.

The 2026 champions will receive $ 2.8 million each, a 19-percent increase on 2025, while first-round losers will get $ 100,761, an increase of 14 percent. But the figure that players are really watching is the proportion of revenue that the prize money represents. Tennis Australia reported its 2025 income to September as $ 465.8 million, a 17-percent increase on the same period in 2024. That would make the prize money around 16 percent of its revenue, but that revenue includes streams other than the Australian Open.

That figure is typical for Grand Slams, but the pressure groups pushing for change in tennis want it to increase significantly. During meetings at the French Open and Wimbledon, representatives for a group including Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff, Iga Świątek, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner argued that it should reach 22 percent by 2030, in line with joint ATP and WTA Tour events and closer, but not close, to the NFL, MLB and NBA, where players receive closer to 50 percent of revenues.

A person briefed on the players' plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships in tennis, said that while grateful for the headline increase in prize money and distributions further down the pyramid, they expected that the players involved will likely be disappointed that their three principal demands of the Australian Open and other Grand Slams — for prize money to better reflect increases in revenues following the COVID-19 pandemic, for greater consultation on tournament matters, and for additional contributions to player welfare — have in their eyes been largely ignored.

The four Grand Slams have been contacted for comment.

Greater prize money, in line with the proportion of revenues in other sports, was also one of the demands of the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA) in the organization's antitrust suit filed against the ATP and WTA Tours in March, in which it also named the International Tennis Federation and the sport’s anti-doping authorities as defendants.

In September, the PTPA removed the latter two organizations and added the organizers of the Australian, French and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon. In December, it said that it had reached an as-yet-undisclosed settlement with Tennis Australia. The other three Grand Slams and two tours have moved to dismiss the suit.

The PTPA was co-founded by Novak Djokovic in 2020, but the 24-time Grand Slam champion announced Sunday that he is stepping away from the organization. Djokovic was also the only player to co-sign the first letter from the top-10 group to the majors in March, but not the second four months later. Ahead of the U.S. Open in August he urged other players to step up in the fight for reform of how the sport is run.

The qualifiers for the Australian Open start Jan. 12, with the main draw starting six days later.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Sports Business, Tennis, Women's Tennis

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