WTA Finals 2026 draw: Rybakina and Gauff share a group, Sabalenka meets Andreeva

World No 1 Elena Rybakina and Coco Gauff were drawn in the same round-robin group for the 2026 WTA Finals on Tuesday, 3 November, while Aryna Sabalenka will face Mirra Andreeva in the other group. The season finale is played at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in California from Sunday 8 to Sunday 15 November.

The two singles groups

According to the WTA, the draw split the eight qualifiers as follows (seeds and WTA rankings of 2 November in brackets):

• Group 1: Elena Rybakina (1), Coco Gauff (4), Jessica Pegula (5), Linda Noskova (8).
• Group 2: Aryna Sabalenka (2), Mirra Andreeva (3), Elina Svitolina (6), Karolina Muchova (7).

Each player meets the other three in her group, and the top two in each group go through to the semi-finals. The round robin fills the first six days, Sunday to Friday, before the semi-finals and the final on the closing weekend, ESPN and Sky Sports reported. Andreeva, Muchova and Noskova are all making their debut at the event.

In doubles, top seeds Gabriela Dabrowski and Luisa Stefani lead Group 1 with Guo Hanyu and Kristina Mladenovic, Jelena Ostapenko and Hsieh Su-wei, and Elise Mertens and Zhang Shuai. Second seeds Taylor Townsend and Katerina Siniakova head Group 2 alongside Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Cristina Bucsa, Ellen Perez and Demi Schuurs, and Jasmine Paolini and Sara Errani.

Group 1: the champion and two Americans

Rybakina arrives as the defending champion, after beating Sabalenka in last year's final in Riyadh, and as the year-end No 1, a ranking she secured in Tokyo last month. Her Ningbo win in October was her fourth title of 2026, a tour-leading tally that includes the Australian Open and the US Open, according to the WTA. "It's a lot of tough players, all great champions," Rybakina said, as quoted by the Associated Press.

Her three opponents know each other well this season. Gauff, the 2024 champion, won her only title of the year in Cincinnati by beating Pegula in the final. Noskova, the Wimbledon champion, beat Pegula in the Berlin final, the first of her two 2026 titles. Pegula, who also won Dubai and Charleston, reached the WTA Finals final in 2023 and is still looking for the trophy. She and Gauff are both making a fifth straight appearance, the longest run by an American since Lindsay Davenport, the WTA noted.

Group 2: Sabalenka back where she won in March

Sabalenka returns to the venue where she won the Indian Wells Open in March, beating Rybakina in the final, before adding the Miami title. She is playing the WTA Finals for a sixth year in a row, the longest active streak on tour, and has never won it.

Andreeva, 19, won her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros in June with a 6-3 6-2 final win over Maja Chwalinska, and has since made her debut in the top three. Svitolina, the 2018 champion in Singapore, is back in the top 10 after titles in Auckland and Rome. Muchova won the biggest title of her career at the WTA 1000 in Doha, added Bad Homburg and made a run to the Wimbledon final, where she lost to Noskova.

What it means

On paper Group 2 is the more even of the two: only 1,820 ranking points separate Sabalenka from Muchova, and all four have won a Grand Slam or WTA 1000 title this year. Group 1 puts the two most consistent Americans of the season against each other again after their Cincinnati final, with Rybakina the clear favourite to top it. For how the event came to Indian Wells and how qualification worked, see our WTA Finals preview and the race to qualify.