Roland-Garros and Wimbledon denied accreditations to the PTPA, dispute over players' rights moved to federal court in New York
The dispute between the Professional Tennis Players Association, an organization known by the abbreviation PTPA, and the organizers of the biggest tennis tournaments has gained a new urgent court episode ahead of Roland-Garros and Wimbledon in 2026. According to a PTPA announcement of May 14, 2026, the association requested the intervention of the federal court in the Southern District of New York after the Fédération Française de Tennis, organizer of the French Open, and the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, organizer of Wimbledon, refused to issue accreditations for this year's editions of the tournaments. The PTPA claims that the refusals are directly connected to the antitrust lawsuit that the organization filed against key bodies of professional tennis. The organizers of Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, according to court filings described by Front Office Sports, cited the existing court proceedings precisely as the reason in written communication. In this way, the technical issue of tournament accreditations became part of a broader discussion about the relationship between players, tournaments and the organizations that govern professional tennis.
The PTPA asked federal judge Margaret M. Garnett to order the issuance of accreditations for its representatives, explaining that access to player areas is necessary so that it can provide support to players during the two most important parts of the season. According to data from the publicly available court register reported by PACER Monitor, the case is filed as Pospisil et al. v. ATP Tour, Inc. et al., number 1:25-cv-02207, before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. In an emergency motion dated May 13, 2026, the PTPA, according to that register, requested preservation of the status quo and a prohibition of retaliation by the FFT and the AELTC. By May 20, 2026, it had not been publicly confirmed that the court had issued a final decision on that emergency request. For that reason, the legal outcome is currently open, while the tournament in Paris is already taking place through the qualifying week.
How the refusals came about
According to a Front Office Sports report, the PTPA sent separate requests to the French Tennis Federation and the All England Club on April 13, 2026. For Roland-Garros, according to the same report, accreditations were requested for three representatives: executive director Romain Rosenberg, executive vice president for player engagement Wajid Mir and director of player relations Anastasia Skavronskaia. The next day, according to allegations from court documentation published by Front Office Sports, French Tennis Federation public relations director Kildine Chevalier replied that the federation had received clear instructions that it could not issue accreditations to any party suing the FFT. Two days later, according to the same source, All England Club representative Joanne Simons informed the PTPA that the AELTC, due to the ongoing proceedings, would not accredit people from the PTPA organization.
In its announcement, the PTPA states that it asked both organizers to reconsider their decisions and that it offered a discussion on a possible path toward resolving the broader dispute. According to the PTPA, those requests were rejected. Front Office Sports states that Romain Rosenberg wrote to the highest officials of the FFT and the AELTC on April 21, 2026, with the message that the PTPA wants to support players and that such an approach, in his opinion, is unproductive. French Tennis Federation executive director Stéphane Morel, according to allegations from court documents cited by Front Office Sports, replied that the FFT cannot issue accreditations to parties suing it and mentioned the possibility that PTPA representatives could gain access through the quotas of individual players. AELTC chief executive Sally Bolton, according to the same report, also rejected the requests for accreditation and a meeting.
For the PTPA, the refusals are not only an administrative decision by the tournaments but a question of possible pressure on an organization participating in litigation. In its announcement of May 14, the PTPA asserted that the FFT and the AELTC refused accreditations on the basis of the antitrust lawsuit and that it considers such conduct unlawful retaliation. The organization also warned that the decisions of the two organizers, in its view, are unusual because the Grand Slam tournaments present themselves in other parts of the proceedings as separate and independent entities. For now, such a claim should be viewed as the procedural position of one side in the dispute, and not as a judicially established fact. The FFT and the AELTC, according to the Front Office Sports report, did not immediately respond to that outlet's requests for comment.
The broader antitrust proceedings against tennis bodies
The dispute over accreditations directly builds on the antitrust lawsuit that the PTPA and a group of professional tennis players filed in March 2025. The Associated Press reported at the time that the lawsuit was filed against the ATP Tour, the WTA Tour, the International Tennis Federation and the International Tennis Integrity Agency, with the PTPA alleging that those organizations control players' working conditions and earnings in a way that restricts competition. According to the AP, the lawsuit does not relate only to prize funds, but also to the competition calendar, match schedules, the ranking system, integrity and anti-doping procedures and, more generally, the structure of professional tennis. The PTPA claims that players as independent professionals do not have the level of collective influence that athletes in many team sports achieve through unions and collective bargaining agreements.
The Associated Press reported that the PTPA was founded in 2020 and was launched by Novak Đoković and Vasek Pospisil with the aim of representing the interests of professional female and male tennis players. Đoković is not listed as a plaintiff in the proceedings, while among the players mentioned in reports about the lawsuit are Vasek Pospisil, Nick Kyrgios, Sorana Cirstea, Varvara Gracheva, Reilly Opelka and Tennys Sandgren. According to the AP, PTPA executive director Ahmad Nassar stated that players want their problems to be taken seriously and structural issues in professional tennis to be resolved. On the other hand, the ATP rejected the PTPA's claims in its statement from March 2025 and assessed that the lawsuit was unfounded, while the WTA, according to the AP, called the proceedings misguided and announced that it would defend its position. These opposing statements showed how deep the gap is between part of the players and the institutions that manage the calendar, tournaments and rules.
The Grand Slam tournaments were not listed as defendants in the initial version of the lawsuit, but were, according to the AP report, described as entities connected with the broader system of professional tennis. Front Office Sports states that the Grand Slam organizers were subsequently added to the proceedings by an amended complaint on September 26, 2025, after the completion of all four Grand Slam tournaments that year. This is an important context for the current dispute over accreditations because the PTPA claims that Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, after becoming part of the proceedings, changed their relationship toward its representatives. According to the PTPA, in previous years the organization used similar procedures to access tournaments, and the Australian Open, according to a source cited by Front Office Sports, issued accreditations in January 2026 after Tennis Australia reached a settlement with the PTPA. The PTPA, according to the same report, had not yet filed a request for accreditations for the 2026 US Open by mid-May.
Why accreditations are important in this kind of dispute
Accreditations for major tournaments are not merely tickets for the stands or technical passes for organizational areas. They determine who may access player zones, training areas, media and operational parts of tournaments and, in practice, who can communicate with players at moments when they are focused on competition. The PTPA claims that without such access it cannot perform its function of representing and supporting players during a period in which important sporting and professional decisions are made. For tournament organizers, however, accreditations are part of the security, operational and legal system used to manage events with a large number of athletes, team members, media, sponsors and spectators. It is precisely at this intersection of the tournaments' organizational authority and claims about the right to represent players that the dispute is now being conducted before an American court.
In its request, the PTPA also relies on an earlier decision by Judge Garnett which, according to the PTPA announcement and reports about the proceedings, related to a prohibition of retaliation against plaintiffs involved in the case. The association claims that denying accreditations is contrary to the spirit of such judicial protection. But if the court decides on the merits of the emergency request, it will have to assess the legal nature of the refusals, the scope of tournament organizers' authority and the connection between those decisions and the active court proceedings. According to available information, the FFT and the AELTC have so far not publicly presented an extensive explanation beyond the written communication mentioned in the court materials. It therefore remains unclear whether their defense will rest exclusively on the tournaments' right to manage accreditations or also on broader arguments about security, operational rules and the relationship with people involved in litigation against them.
Roland-Garros has already begun, Wimbledon follows at the end of June
The timing of the emergency request is particularly important because Roland-Garros 2026 is already underway. According to the tournament's official schedule, qualifying in Paris began on May 18, 2026, and the main draw begins on May 24 and lasts until the men's final on June 7. This means that the legal dispute over access to the tournament is being conducted at a moment when numerous players are already on the courts of the Porte d'Auteuil complex or are preparing there for the start of the main part of the competition. If the court did not react quickly, the part of the PTPA's request relating to Roland-Garros could lose its practical effect before the end of the proceedings. That is precisely why the PTPA shaped its filing as an emergency request, asking the court to preserve the possibility of access to players during the tournament itself.
Wimbledon 2026, according to the official schedule of The Championships, is played from June 29 to July 12. That leaves somewhat more time for a legal and organizational response, but the dispute in the London case also concerns the same question: can a Grand Slam organizer refuse accreditation to an association that is suing it and at the same time refer to the existence of litigation. Wimbledon has especially strict access rules because the tournament is held at the All England Club complex, with a large number of accredited people and precisely regulated zones. Still, the PTPA claims that this is not a matter of ordinary discretionary decision-making on accreditations, but of a decision directly connected with legal proceedings. That difference will be crucial for the court's assessment if the question is considered before the start of the grass-court tournament.
Money, calendar and tennis governance in the background of the conflict
The dispute over accreditations comes at a time when professional tennis is already intensely debating revenue distribution, the length of the season and players' influence on decision-making. According to the official tournament schedule and announcements about the prize fund, Roland-Garros 2026 is being held as one of the most important sporting events of the season, and publicly available prize-fund data show growth in total payouts compared with the previous year. But the PTPA and some players claim that nominal growth in prizes does not resolve the fundamental question of players' share in the total revenues of the biggest tournaments. In the context of the initial lawsuit, the Associated Press reported that the PTPA challenges a structure in which, according to claims from the lawsuit, Grand Slam tournaments generate very large revenues while players are paid a smaller share than they consider fair. Tournament organizers and leading tennis bodies, on the other hand, emphasize their own investments in the growth of the sport, infrastructure, global promotion and the stability of the competition system.
In legal terms, the accreditation dispute does not resolve all those questions, but it makes them more visible. If representatives of an organization that claims to represent players cannot obtain access to tournaments at which players compete, then a practical question arises as to how dialogue on reforms, revenues and working conditions can be conducted at all. If, however, the court accepts the arguments of tournament organizers, that could confirm the broad autonomy of the Grand Slams in managing access to their premises, especially in situations in which there is an active legal dispute. In both cases, the decision could have consequences beyond the 2026 season itself, because it would define the boundaries between the right of tournaments to control their own events and the right of a players' organization to be present in the environment in which its members and potential members compete.
Uncertain continuation and possible effects on relations in tennis
At present, it has not been officially confirmed that the dispute over accreditations will affect the staging of Roland-Garros or Wimbledon. The tournaments, according to official schedules, continue as planned. Still, the legal conflict places an additional burden on relations between some players, the PTPA and the institutions that organize professional tennis. In the short term, the most important question is whether the court will order the issuance of accreditations or allow the decisions of the FFT and the AELTC to remain in force. In the medium term, the case could influence the way Grand Slams and other major competitions treat representatives of players involved in legal or collective initiatives. In the long term, this dispute remains part of the broader debate about whether professional tennis needs a different governance model, a more transparent distribution of revenues and a stronger institutional voice for players.
For now, the basic facts are known: the PTPA requested accreditations for Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, the FFT and the AELTC refused them while referring to existing litigation, and the PTPA requested urgent protection from the federal court in New York. Everything else will depend on the court's assessment, further filings by the parties and the possibility that the legal dispute, before or during the Grand Slam season, is at least partly resolved through negotiations. While qualifying matches are being played in Paris and Wimbledon is approaching, the tennis court and the courtroom have once again become parts of the same story about power, access and representation in global professional sport.
Sources:
- Professional Tennis Players Association – official announcement on the emergency motion over refused accreditations for Roland-Garros and Wimbledon (link)
- Front Office Sports – report on court filings, PTPA communication with the FFT and the AELTC and the context of the accreditation dispute (link)
- Associated Press – background of the PTPA antitrust lawsuit, the founding of the organization and allegations about the structure of professional tennis (link)
- PACER Monitor – public data on the case Pospisil et al. v. ATP Tour, Inc. et al. and the emergency motion of May 13, 2026 (link)
- Roland-Garros – official 2026 tournament schedule from qualifying to the finals (link)
- Wimbledon – official schedule of The Championships 2026 (link)