Update — Aug. 24, 2026: Both titles are decided. Arthur Fils beat Frances Tiafoe 6-3, 1-6, 6-0 for his first Masters 1000 title, ending France’s 12-year wait for a champion at the level, and Coco Gauff beat Jessica Pegula 6-2, 6-4 for her second Cincinnati title and her first trophy of the season. Tiafoe took a medical timeout before the third set and did not win a game after it. Gauff converted five of six break points in 74 minutes. The preview below is left as filed.
The Cincinnati Open ends Sunday with two finals that share almost nothing except the length of the wait behind them. Frances Tiafoe and Arthur Fils meet for the men’s title not before 4:30 p.m. ET, and whoever wins will be an ATP Masters 1000 champion for the first time. Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula follow not before 7 p.m., in the first all-American women’s final at the tournament since 1970.
Neither pairing was the one the draw sheet pointed at. Jannik Sinner withdrew from the US Open earlier in the week and had not played here. Carlos Alcaraz was never in the field. Novak Djokovic went out in the second round to a qualifier. Aryna Sabalenka, the world No. 1, lost in the fourth round to an unseeded 20-year-old. What is left is a men’s final between the 17th and 21st seeds and a women’s final between the two highest-ranked Americans in the sport.
The men: a title neither man has ever held
Tiafoe reached this final once before, in 2024, and lost to Sinner in three sets. He got back by beating Brandon Nakashima 7-5, 6-3 on Saturday in an all-American semifinal, saving two set points at 4-5 in the opener with forehand winners before the match turned for good. It was his seventh win in eight meetings with Nakashima.
Fils arrived by taking apart Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 6-4 after a rain and lightning delay held up the start. He is into the first Masters 1000 final of his career at 22, and the second French player to reach a Cincinnati final, after Guy Forget in 1991.
The head-to-head runs one match deep and it belongs to Fils, who beat Tiafoe in a two-hour, 55-minute third-round match in Miami last year. The Associated Press reported that the final is also the first meeting of two Black players in an ATP Masters 1000 championship match, and that Sunday’s winner will become the third Black man to win a title at the level, after Ben Shelton and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
The women: the longest gap on the board
The last time two American women played for the Cincinnati title, Rosie Casals beat Nancy Richey. That was 1970. Gauff was not born for another 34 years.
“I didn’t realize it was so long since we’ve had a double American final,” Pegula said after her semifinal, in comments reported by the Associated Press.
She earned her place by ending Iga Swiatek’s title defense 7-5, 4-6, 6-4, coming back from a break down in the third and snapping a 10-match winning streak that had carried the Pole through Toronto. It was Pegula’s tour-leading 45th win of the year. Gauff needed 76 minutes to beat Sara Bejlek 6-4, 6-1, closing out a week in which the unseeded Czech had removed Sabalenka, Madison Keys and Barbora Krejcikova from the draw.
Sunday is their 10th career meeting. Pegula leads 5-4 overall and 3-1 on outdoor hard courts, but Gauff has taken the two that arguably matter most in this context: their only previous final, at Wuhan in 2025, and their only meeting this season, in the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
Gauff is chasing her first title of 2026 and a second Rookwood Cup, which would make her the third player since 2004 to win Cincinnati twice, alongside Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka. Pegula, a runner-up here to Sabalenka in 2024, is after her third title of the year.
What it feeds into
This is the last competitive tennis before the US Open, and the last input into a seeding board that locks on Monday. The men’s champion earns $1,151,380 and 1,000 ranking points; both finals will move the North American hard-court picture that Flushing Meadows inherits in seven days.
The doubles final opens the day at 2 p.m., with Orlando Luz and Rafael Matos facing Constantin Frantzen and Robin Haase.
