Fans at Australian Open 2026 will have plenty of local heroes to cheer for when three weeks of Grand Slam action begins at Melbourne Park on 12 January.
From the 24 Aussies attempting to qualify to their compatriots competing in the final week’s junior and wheelchair events – plus singles stars in the AO main draws – there are more than 50 Australian players bidding to continue an impressive trend of success.
For the past 14 editions of the AO dating back to 2012, there’s been at least one Aussie champion in one of the tournament’s events.
Last year it was Olivia Gadecki and John Peers, who prevailed in the mixed doubles final to win their first Grand Slam title together as team.
Singles main draws
Alex de Minaur leads the Aussie charge, once again, as a player entrenched in the top 10. He has won 13 of his past 17 AO matches, following up fourth-round finishes in 2022, 2023 and 2024 with his first quarterfinal in 2025.
“I would love nothing more than to have a deep run there and keep building upon what I’ve been doing the last couple of years and hopefully be a threat for the title,” he revealed in a recent episode of The Sit-Down podcast.
Maya Joint is Australia’s leading woman; the 19-year-old, currently ranked 32nd, is positioned to be seeded at a Grand Slam for the first time.
Queenslanders Kimberly Birrell and Priscilla Hon will also compete in the main draw after career-best seasons in 2025, and they will be joined by Ajla Tomljanovic, who began 2026 on the perfect note with an opening-round win at the Brisbane International.
World No.37 Daria Kasatkina, meanwhile, will compete under the Aussie flag at the AO for the first time, while wildcards Talia Gibson, Emerson Jones and Taylah Preston make it eight Australian women in the main draw.
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It’s the same number for the men, with Alexei Popyrin arguably the biggest threat at the majors behind De Minaur. Last year he reached the fourth round at Roland Garros, less than a year after reaching the same stage at the US Open, while he has also appeared in the third round three times at Melbourne Park.
Aleksandar Vukic returns after his third-round run at AO 2025, while Thanasi Kokkinakis is making a comeback after a year on the sidelines, using a protected ranking.
Adam Walton and Tristan Schoolkate – top-100 debutants in 2024 and 2025 respectively – join their countrymen in the main draw, as do wildcards James Duckworth and Rinky Hijikata.
Singles qualifying
Twelve men and 12 women from Australia will attract plenty of support across Melbourne Park during AO Opening Week presented by Herald Sun as they aim to qualify for the main draw.
Last year, Destanee Aiava was one of them, before going on to become one of the more heartwarming stories of the tournament. She’s back in 2026, hoping to repeat the feat.
Astra Sharma is another who knows how it feels to qualify – she did so at AO 2019 – as does Storm Hunter, the star of Australia’s first win at this year’s United Cup and who qualified for AO 2024.
Fellow Aussies Gadecki, Maddison Inglis and Arina Rodionova have qualified at other Grand Slam venues and will attempt to do so for the first time at Melbourne Park in 2026.
Two Aussie teenagers, Tahlia Kokkinis and Renee Alame, will compete in qualifying before taking on the world’s best juniors in the second week, as will Cruz Hewitt, son of Aussie great Lleyton Hewitt who will feature in both qualifying and juniors.
Hewitt is joined in the men’s qualifying field by young countrymen James McCabe, Philip Sekulic, Edward Winter and Pavle Marinkov, all aged 22 and under.
Meanwhile, veterans Jordan Thompson, Bernard Tomic, Alex Bolt and Jason Kubler, all with significant experience on the Grand Slam stage, will aim for another appearance in the AO main draw.
Tomic ended a season inside the top 200 for the first time since 2019, while Bolt and Kubler will enter qualifying after strong recent performances on the Australian Pro Tour.
So too will Dane Sweeny, who won more than 70 matches in 2025 and this weekend qualified for the Brisbane International main draw.
Doubles
The host nation has a history of success in Australian Open doubles, with three of the past four winning men’s doubles teams featuring at least one home-grown player, and Gadecki and Peers the reigning mixed champions.
Hunter and Joint will form an all-Aussie combination in the women’s doubles, while 2023 champion Hijikata and Schoolkate will do the same in the men’s event.
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Australian doubles stars Peers, Matt Ebden, John-Patrick Smith and Ellen Perez will all compete at Melbourne Park, part of the 12-strong Aussie doubles contingent at AO 2026.
Also among that group is Thompson, a former top-five doubles player who won the 2024 US Open alongside Max Purcell.
First-round men’s and women’s doubles action begins on Tuesday 20 January, while mixed doubles starts Thursday 22 January.
Juniors and wheelchair events
Joining Hewitt, Kokkinis and Alame in the AO Junior Championships field is Daniel Jovanovski, the 17-year-old Aussie who in October peaked at junior world No.63.
Junior action commences on Saturday 24 January, three days before the wheelchair events kick off at Melbourne Park.
World No.26 Anderson Parker has received a wildcard into the main draw of the men’s wheelchair singles, while a group of four Aussies – led by top-10 stars Jin Woodman and Heath Davidson – will represent the green-and-gold in the quad singles event.
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Davidson, the 38-year-old veteran of the quartet, said he was thrilled by the growth of the wheelchair event at the AO, which in 2026 forms part of an expanded Wheelchair Summer Series.
“We’ve come a long way and I’m just happy to be a part of the growth and happy to give back to the next generation that are coming up and gonna start beating me,” Davidson said on The Sit-Down podcast.
“Back when we were kids, we never saw it on TV. I didn’t know there was wheelchair tennis growing up.”