The American Express presale for the first 2026 Us Open tickets opened Tuesday at 9 a.m. ET and, within hours, the USTA says the majority of tickets for every session in every stadium had sold out.
Face-value one-day grounds passes began at $65 and rose to $135 depending on the day, but verified resale inventory on Ticketmaster was far higher — roughly $235 to $450 before taxes and fees for many listings, with the cheapest verified resale about four times face value. For marquee dates the gap widened: tickets for the men’s singles final on September 13 were listed for as much as $30,000, and an X user reported 430,298 people ahead of them in the queue for the same match at Arthur Ashe Stadium, which holds about 23,000.
The numbers underline what the secondary market is already showing: season and premium sessions are in heavy demand. The average ticket price for the entire 2025 US Open was $529; SeatGeek said that was an 18% increase from 2024. This year’s average so far is $617, with the average men’s singles final ticket at $1,732 and the average women’s singles final at $1,230. By comparison, the averages last year for the finals were $1,615 for the men and $825 for the women. Last year the tournament drew a record 1.14 million attendees.
The USTA framed the sellout as familiar. "Demand for US Open tickets continues to be extraordinary, as it has been for the last several years. For the third year in a row, the majority of Amex Presale tickets — which includes tickets for every session in every stadium at the US Open — sold out within the first few hours of going on sale," the organization said, and added it will "evaluate how to optimize fan access to the US Open." The USTA also noted that "Fans seeing tickets available via resale during the presale period may be seeing tickets resold from full-series tournament subscribers. It is legal in New York State for those ticket holders to resell their tickets."
Ticketmaster pointed to its policing of automated activity, saying it is "blocking 20 billion bots a month," but the presence of high-priced resale listings — and reports of massive virtual queues — highlights a tension between selling out official inventory quickly and keeping seats within reach for ordinary fans.
There are structural limits that make the squeeze predictable. The 2026 tournament runs from August 23 to September 13, with the main draw at Arthur Ashe Stadium from August 30 to September 13. The women’s singles final is scheduled for September 12 and the men’s final for September 13. The US Open also offers free grounds admission for eight days of the tournament, including the seven-day qualifying week from August 23 to August 29 and a promoted Open for All Day on September 10, but premium stadium seats remain scarce and expensive. The USTA sells 10 ticket plans ranging from three-day plans to two-week-long tickets and full-series subscribers can legally resell their packages.
The tension is concrete: face-value grounds passes start at $65, yet verified resale prices often equaled multiple times that amount within minutes of the presale, and premium finals now command average prices in the thousands. That pattern — rapid sellouts followed by high resale — has repeated for three years. The USTA’s promise to "evaluate how to optimize fan access to the US Open" acknowledges the problem, but it stops short of detailing changes that would affect the resale market or expand inventory.
With the general public sale set to begin Thursday at 12 p.m. ET, the immediate consequence is simple: most stadium sessions are likely to move through resale channels, and ordinary fans will face higher prices or long waits. Unless the USTA adopts substantive new measures before the public sale — or primary inventory is expanded — the facts suggest the next wave of Us Open tickets will look the same: quick official sellouts and a booming secondary market that keeps many seats out of reach.
