Sinner ends 2026 season early with knee injury

World No. 1 Jannik Sinner will not play again in 2026 because of an ongoing injury to his right knee.

The 25-year-old Italian announced the early end to his season in an Instagram video on 6 October, saying he and his doctors had decided he needed a course of treatment for the knee BBC Sport. He said he had to think about his long-term career.

Sinner has not played competitively since defending his Wimbledon title in July. The layoff has grown through the summer and autumn. He withdrew from the Cincinnati Open in August and then the US Open ATP Tour, later pulling out of Beijing and the Shanghai Masters as the knee problem lingered Reuters.

His absence leaves the year-end No. 1 race open. Second-ranked Alexander Zverev, who won the French Open and US Open this year, trails Sinner by 1,280 points in the live rankings BBC Sport. With tournaments in Asia and Europe still to come, plus the ATP Finals in Turin — the season-ending event for the top eight men — those points can still move.

It halts a season that started in full flow. Sinner went 44-3 in singles before shutting down, winning five Masters 1000 titles in a row between March and May. Masters 1000 events sit one level below the four Grand Slams, and that run made him the youngest man to complete the career Golden Masters, winning all nine of them across his career.

For fans, this means a strange end to a dominant stretch. Sinner closed 2025 with titles in China, Vienna, Paris and the ATP Finals, then carried that form into January's Australian Open semi-finals and a spring sweep through Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome. Then Wimbledon was the last stand. Season over.

The five-time Grand Slam champion now faces a race of a different kind: treatment, rest and a return with his ranking and his game intact.