Preview: 2026 Australian Open Wheelchair Championships
The first major chapter of the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour’s new era reaches a climax this coming week as, for the second successive year, 54 players line up for the 2026 Australian Open Wheelchair Championships, the first Grand Slam tournament of the year.
By the start of main draw matches on Tuesday at Melbourne Park, that field of 54 players will have been reduced to 48, with two men’s singles, two women’s singles and two quad singles qualifying matches being played on Monday’s opening day of competition.
Former world No.4 Ohtani returns in Qualifying draw
In terms of stand-out results from over two weeks of competition in the new Premier Tier of tournaments introduced for 2016, Momoko Ohtani’s immediate appearance in the women’s singles qualifying draw at the Australian Open catches the eye.
The Japanese former world No. 4 and former Roland Garros finalist returned from 15 months out of competition to beat reigning Wimbledon champion Wang Ziying of China in just her second tournament since the Paris 2024 Paralympics, Ohtani going on to reach the WC 1000 Melbourne open final against her compatriot Yui Kamiji.
Ohtani’s Melbourne Open win over Wang followed the Chinese player’s first singles title of 2026 at the Victorian Open, which she achieved by edging a final set-tie-break against former world No. 1 and six-time Australian Open champion Diede de Groot.
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In her first full season back in competition after eight months out at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025 for hip surgery and rehab, De Groot will hope to regain something like her best form, and what better place to do it than on one of the grandest platforms of all in Melbourne.
World No.1 Kamiji starts her Australian Open title defence unbeaten in 2026 and as the only women’s player with two singles titles this season after victories at both the United Cup International in Sydney and the Melbourne Open.
Among confirmed first round match-ups for the start of Tuesday’s main draw, Ksenia Chasteau’s meeting with Li Xiaohui and Lizzy de Greef’s contest against Zhu Zhenzhen are two head-to-heads that also catch the eye.
Oda bids to complete full house of successive Grand Slam titles
Tokito Oda’s list of historic achievements grow season-by-season and the 19-year-old goes into this year’s Australian Open on a mission to try and become the latest wheelchair player to hold all four Grand Slam singles titles at the same time.
Oda’s straight sets loss to Alfie Hewett in last year’s men’s singles final at Melbourne Park is not far from the memory, but Oda will care to forget and, instead, remember his wins over Hewett and Gustavo Fernandez in the remaining three Grand Slam finals of 2025.
The manner of Oda’s victory over Hewett just a few days ago at the Melbourne Open, winning 7-5 in a third and deciding set, does little to suggest that the world’s top two players are not in the kind of form to see them set up another Grand Slam title decider between them, but there are endless possibilities.
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Hewett started 2026 by winning the WC 500 Brisbane International men’s singles title without dropping a set, but then sat out the Victorian Open and, in Hewett’s absence, world No. 4 Fernandez gained his first title of the year in a three-set contest against Gordon Reid.
Due to become a father later this year, Fernandez will be keen to reach a second successive Grand Slam hard court final, having missed match points that, if converted, would have been seen him beat Oda in a pulsating US Open final in New York last September.
However, before the finalists are decided, there is plenty of tennis to be played and plenty of stories to be told, with Tuesday’s first round main draw matches including a mouth-watering meeting between top 10 rivals Martin De la Puente and Ruben Spaargaren.
De la Puente began the new season by defeating Spaargaren 6-4 in a deciding third set in the quarter-finals in Brisbane.
More immediately, Japan’s Daisuke Arai, who won through his qualifying round 12 months ago, will attempt to do so again on Monday when he lines in one of two men’s matches that also feature Brazil’s Daniel Rodrigues, Dutchman Maarten Ter Hofte and Chile’s Alexander Cataldo.
Schroder to bid for Australian Open five-timer
In 2022 Sam Schroder ended Dylan Alcott’s reign as Australian Open quad singles champion and, in doing so, somewhat spoilt Alcott’s retirement party after defeating the Australian in a title decider that was the home favourite’s last competitive match of his storied career.
Since then it is Schroder who has built a string of four successive titles at Melbourne Park and, this year, he will attempt to make it five in a row to close on Alcott’s record of seven victories between 2015 and 2021.
That Schroder has managed to fend off either fellow Dutchman Niels Vink or Israel’s Guy Sasson in the last three finals is no mean feat. In the last two seasons the same trio of players have won all available Grand Slam quad singles titles between them.
Schroder and Vink have both been in title-winning form already this season after two finals against each other – Vink at the Adelaide International and Schroder at the Melbourne Open, with Vink retiring in the latter final after the world’s top two players split the first two sets.
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Sasson, meanwhile, has lost to Schroder in the quarter-finals in Adelaide and to Vink in the semis at the Melbourne Open.
Tuesday’s main draw first round pits Vink against Australian wild card Finn Broadbent and Sasson against recent Adelaide International finalist Donald Ramphadi.
Meanwhile, Schroder opens his title defence against Canada’s Rob Shaw, for whom this year’s Australian Open will be the final tournament of an illustrious career, before Shaw begins working for Tennis Canada as Wheelchair Tennis High Performance Consultant.
On paper, arguably the most noteworthy tie in the first round is that between world No. 4 Ahmet Kaplan of Turkey, the last of the four seeds in the draw, and world No. 5 and former two-time Australian Open finalist Andy Lapthorne.
In the more immediate future, Brazil’s Leandro Pena will bid to come through qualifying to reach the main draw for the second successive year. Two of Pena, fellow Brazilian Ymanitu Silva, Andrew Bogdanov and Daniel Campaz will progress to Tuesday's first round.
View all of the 2026 Australian Open Wheelchair Championships draws here