2 min read
New York City residents can now enter a lottery for the chance to purchase discounted tickets to the 2026 U.S. Open. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the United States Tennis Association announced Tuesday that 1,000 tickets will be made available to city residents at $100 each, well below typical market prices for the tournament.
The tickets go on sale this morning, Wednesday, August 26, at 10 a.m. at USOpen.org/NYCTickets, on a first-come, first-served basis. Each resident can purchase up to two tickets, valid for Main Draw matches running from August 30 through September 8. The tickets include access to Arthur Ashe Stadium, Louis Armstrong Stadium, and grounds passes, covering both singles and doubles matches.
The announcement comes amid growing frustration over the cost of attending the U.S. Open. Grounds passes, which allow general admission access to most courts but not Arthur Ashe Stadium, range from $65 to $150 depending on the day. But those are already reselling for $360 or more, and they don’t even come with assigned seats. Tickets in the upper deck of Arthur Ashe for late-round matches are already selling between $300 and $400 on the secondary market. According to Curbed, a single courtside seat for the men’s final was listed for $29,000, while a parking spot at the venue was recently listed for nearly $7,000 on one ticketing platform. (Though true fans who attend annually know the fastest and easiest way to get there is the 7 train at $3 each way, or the Long Island Rail Road at $7.25 during peak hours.) Food and drinks inside the grounds are similarly expensive, with a lobster roll going for $39.50, a French dip sandwich for $38, and the tournament’s signature Honey Deuce cocktail for $23.
The discounted ticket program mirrors a similar initiative the Mamdani administration rolled out ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in June, when the city secured 1,000 reduced-price tickets at $50 each for New York City residents across seven matches at MetLife Stadium, with free round-trip bus transportation included for winners. However, unlike the World Cup, where affordable tickets absolutely required winning a city lottery due to FIFA’s pricing structure, the U.S. Open does have a window for cheaper tickets, at least for those who know about it. There is a pre-sale, albeit only accessible to American Express cardholders, which typically opens in late May, well before general tickets go on sale. Those who catch it at the right moment can often find semifinal tickets for $150 to $200 each and even buy-one-get-one-free quarterfinal deals for as little as $50 apiece, though the deals move fast.
For those who aren’t eligible for the lottery or who don’t win, it’s still possible to buy tickets online:
Get U.S. Open tickets on Ticketmaster
Get U.S. Open tickets on StubHub
Get U.S. Open tickets on VividSeats
Get U.S. Open tickets on SeatGeek
Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at @rk.passport.