Who will win the 2026 US Open? The Opta supercomputer simulates the tournament 10,000 times to reveal the favourites, outliers and dark horses.
The US Open 2026 draws are set, and the Opta supercomputer has crunched the numbers on how Flushing Meadows is likely to unfold. The headline takeaway: the men’s and women’s fields could hardly look more different in shape.
On the men’s side, the gap between the very top of the sport and everyone else is stark. Carlos Alcaraz, despite being seeded below Alexander Zverev, is given nearly double his title chance, the largest such mismatch in either draw, while his own quarter has swallowed up a third of the tournament’s entire title equity.
Elsewhere, a handful of players are wildly outperforming their seeding, and one unseeded name is rated a bigger threat than 14 seeds combined.
The women’s draw tells a different story entirely. With four players in contention for the World No. 1 ranking, there is no runaway favourite, and every top seed faces a genuine coin-flip’s chance of an early exit.
There is also a fascinating split in fortunes between the toughest and softest sections of the bracket, with potentially critical implications for the closing stages.
Here is what the numbers say.
Who Will Win The 2026 US Open?
Carlos Alcaraz is the clear favourite (13.2%) to defend his men’s singles title Aryna Sabalenka (9.6%) heads a much more open women’s singles draw The Opta supercomputer tells the tale of two very different draws, illustrating the contrasting states of the ATP and WTA toursMen’s Singles Predictions
As noted throughout the week, the gap between Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and the rest of the ATP top five, let alone the wider tour, is sizeable. The Opta supercomputer shares that view, even with Sinner absent and Alcaraz set to play his first competitive match since April.
Go Deeper:
TennisJust How Big Is the Gap Between Sinner, Alcaraz and the Rest in 2026?
3 days ago Ante JukicThe 5.9% gap in favouritism between Alcaraz (13.2%) and top seed Alexander Zverev (7.3%) is the largest seed/favouritism mismatch in either draw, and wider than the gap between the top eight favourites in the women’s singles draw combined (5.5%).
With top-end susceptibility in mind, Cincinnati champion and 10th seed Arthur Fils is a monster outlier. His 7.0% title chance places him above every seed from 3 through 9, meaning he is effectively playing like a top-three favourite despite his 10th seeding.
Rafael Jodar (12th seed, 4.2%) shows a similar pattern, outperforming seeds 5 to 8 and 11.
That susceptibility matters for Alcaraz too. With his return to competition in mind, his quarter of the draw is stacked: it alone carries 33.1% of all the title equity on offer, meaning a third of the tournament’s chances live in one eighth of the bracket, largely because Alcaraz (13.2%) and Fils (7.0%) sit in the same quarter.
By comparison, the most-loaded women’s quarter tops out at 26.2%. The other three men’s quarters, headed by Zverev, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Novak Djokovic, sit much closer together at 21 to 25%, underlining how much wider the gap between the strongest and weakest sections is on the men’s side.
Only six of the 32 seeds in the men’s singles draw have been given better than a 33.3% chance of reaching the second week: Alcaraz (49.7%), Zverev (40.1%), Fils (38.3%), Djokovic (35.0%), and home favourites Taylor Fritz (38.5%) and Frances Tiafoe (33.4%).
Perhaps the standout name outside the seeds, though, is Thiago Agustin Tirante. He has been given a higher probability of winning the title (1.4%) than 14 of this year’s seeds, the highest figure of any unseeded player at the event.
Only two players since 1973 have recorded more ATP top-20 wins in a season than the Argentine’s eight in 2026 while ranked outside the top 50: compatriot Juan Martin del Potro (10, 2016) and Boris Becker (9, 1998).
Women’s Singles Predictions
The women’s draw tells a very different story, one that reflects the strength and depth currently running through the WTA tour, with four players in the running to claim the World No. 1 ranking at this event. According to the Opta supercomputer, the favourites are bunched rather than dominant.
Nobody has a runaway title chance. Aryna Sabalenka leads at 9.6%, with Elena Rybakina close behind at 8.6%. The numbers drop off after that but remain competitive right through the top 10.
The top seeds are far from safe as a result. Sabalenka, the top seed and current World No. 1, is given just a 46.9% chance of reaching the last 16, which is essentially a coin-flip’s chance of an early exit. The same story applies to Rybakina (48.2%) and Jessica Pegula (43.8%).
Despite having the eighth-highest chance of tournament victory as the No. 4 seed, draw strength can see Coco Gauff make a significant challenge. Her quarter is comparatively the weakest by total tournament equity, holding 20.9% overall and just 15.6% once Gauff’s own chances are excluded.
Her nearest quarter-mate by the numbers is fifth seed Mirra Andreeva (3.1%), with a real drop-off to Alexandra Eala (17th seed, 2.3%) and Amanda Anisimova (10th seed, 1.8%).
Despite reporting that frames the bottom half as stacked with Grand Slam pedigree, the Opta supercomputer views Gauff’s specific section as comparatively soft; good news after a Cincinnati title run that came with relatively little fuss in what has otherwise been an attritional season for her.
By contrast, Sabalenka’s quarter checks out as the toughest in the draw, carrying the most combined title equity of any section at 26.2%, and not solely because Sabalenka herself is the overall favourite. Even excluding her, the quarter still holds 16.6% of the draw’s title equity, powered by Marta Kostyuk (5.3%) and Linda Noskova (2.3%), plus a dangerous floater in two-time major champion Barbora Krejcikova (1.2%).
How Our Tournament Simulator Works
Our tournament projection model simulates the outcome of the tournament 10,000 times, estimating every player’s likelihood to get through each round of the draw based on their skill strength, where they are in the draw and the skill of the potential opponents they could face.
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US Open 2026 Predictions: Alcaraz the Standout Favourite as Opta’s Supercomputer Reveals a Draw of Contrasts Opta Analyst.
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