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Maja Chwalinska v Mirra Andreeva: French Open 2026 women’s singles final – live | French Open 2026
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Chwalinska says:
I feel like I’m in the bubble. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just very happy to be here. After the tournament there will be time to process it and breathe in, breathe out. Let’s not pretend someone expected it. I was outside the top 100 and now I’m in the final of a grand slam. It is hard to process.
Andreeva says:
I’m getting closer – I’m getting older, a little bit more mature with every match I play, a little bit more experience. I’ve been trying to work on being more calm, more positive. I’m very focused, and I felt like recently I have been trying to do a lot of different stuff. Maybe now I have found what’s been working very well for me, and I’m really trying to stick to that and do it every match that I play every time.
Andreeva
1R def Fiona Ferro 6-3, 6-3
2R def Marina Bassols Ribera 3-6, 6-1, 6-1
3R def Marie Bouzkova (27) 6-3, 6-2
4R def Jil Teichmann 6-3, 6-2
QF def Sorana Cirstea (18) 6-0, 6-3
SF def Marta Kostyuk (15) 6-1, 6-3
Chwalinska
Qualifying 1R def Alice Rame 6-0, 6-3
Q2R def Carole Monnet 6-0, 6-1
Q3R def Suzan Lamens 7-6 (4), 7-5
1R def Zheng Qinwen 6-4, 6-0
2R def Elise Mertens (23) 6-4, 6-0
3R def Maria Sakkari 1-6, 6-3, 6-2
4R def Diane Parry 6-3, 6-2
QF def Anna Kalinskaya (22) 7-6 (3), 6-3
SF def Diana Shnaider (25) 7-6 (4), 6-4
Road to the final. Both players have dropped only one set so far, though with all the destruction in the draw, neither has had to face a top-10 opponent. Andreeva did, however, impressively snap the 17-match winning streak of Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk in the semi-finals, with the Russian showing great composure and maturity amid the tense political backdrop to the match. Chwalinska has upset the Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen, along with the seeds Elise Mertens, Anna Kalinskaya and Diana Shnaider, doing to Shnaider what Shnaider did to Aryna Sabalenka in the quarter-finals.
Tale of the tape
Andreeva – Chwalinska
9 Age 24
8 Seeding –
8 World ranking 114
0 Grand slam titles 0
0 Previous slam finals 0
5 Singles titles 0
0 Head-to-head 0
TNT Sports shows some live shots of Chwalinska backstage, lying under a blanket on a sofa. She looks like she’s about to embark on a Netflix binge rather than her first grand slam final.
Tumaini Carayol’s preview
Fancy reading Tumaini’s preview too? Sure you do:
The summer of 2022 took Maja Chwalinska to the familiar surroundings of the Bank of England Sports Club in Roehampton. A world away from the real thing, the then world No 170 worked her way through three gruelling Wimbledon qualifying matches against players ranked outside the top 150 to successfully make it to the main draw. She then marked her long-awaited appearance in the grounds of the All England Club with a big win over the world No 79 Katerina Siniakova before being dismantled in two sets in her second-round match.
For the past four years, that solitary main-draw victory was the pinnacle of Chwalinska’s career at the biggest events. The only other time the Pole qualified for a grand slam, the Australian Open last year, she was thrashed 6-0, 6-1 by Jule Niemeier, the world No 93, in the first round. She has failed to make it out of the preliminary rounds on 12 occasions and there have even been times over the past few years when her ranking dropped so low that she was unable to enter qualifying.
Seemingly out of nowhere, she now stands on the verge of history, a victory away from becoming the first player to win the French Open as a qualifier when she faces the eighth seed Mirra Andreeva in Saturday’s final. Since her first qualifying match on 18 May, Chwalinska, now ranked 114 in the world, has rolled through nine consecutive victories across three weeks, losing one set.
This is certainly one of the top two most shocking grand slam runs in history and it may not be second on that list. The only other result that bears any sort of comparison is, of course, Emma Raducanu’s 2021 US Open triumph, the only other time a qualifier has reached a major final. Considering her complete dearth of experience at the very start of her career, no player will ever have a breakthrough like Raducanu’s, but her inexperience also made it difficult to assess her potential. Chwalinska, however, is a known entity who has been competing for more than 10 years. All evidence suggested something like this was never going to happen.
Chwalinska is small and easily overpowered, standing only 1m 64cm (5ft 5in), but her lack of physical strength has forced her to nurture a different style of play. At Roland Garros she has worked through her opponents one paper cut at a time, constantly varying the speed, spin and trajectory of her shots while putting the ball in the toughest positions around the court. She also has been brilliant defensively. With the added stress and tension in the final weeks of a grand slam draw, she has been an absolute nightmare to face. On Thursday, Diana Shnaider looked like a broken woman in the final moments of their match after failing to find a way past her.
You can read the rest here:
Britain’s Alfie Hewett is also under way in the men’s wheelchair singles final, against his great rival, Japan’s Tokito Oda, with Hewett a break down, 3-2, in the opening set.
Patten and Heliovaara do have one big consolation though: they’ll be the joint world No 1s when the new rankings come out on Monday.
Already today: Britain’s Henry Patten hasn’t been able to add to his grand slam collection, losing the men’s doubles final alongside Finland’s Harri Heliovaara. Patten and Heliovaara, the 2024 Wimbledon and 2025 Australian Open winners, lost 6-4, 6-2 against the defending champions Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos, the Spanish-Argentinian duo, who’ve now gone back-to-back at Roland Garros.
Preamble
Salut! The teenage prodigy vs the 24-year-old qualifier and 500-1 outsider; as paths to a first grand slam final go, Mirra Andreeva’s and Maja Chwalinska’s couldn’t be more different.
Andreeva, having burst on to the WTA Tour as the most precocious of 15-year-olds in 2023, before reaching the French Open semi-finals in 2024, has long been tipped for major glory, and now, aged 19, the Russian appears to be finding the temperament to add to her tremendous talents and take that final step.
Chwalinska, after moving through the junior ranks in Poland with Iga Swiatek, struggled to break through as a pro, and after failing to qualify for Wimbledon in 2021 she took an indefinite break from tennis because of depression. “I pushed at the beginning, but then I just couldn’t get out of bed any more,” she says. “I was lifeless. I knew I needed to take a break. I honestly didn’t know if I was going to come back.”
When she did feel strong enough to return she qualified for her first ever grand slam, winning one round at Wimbledon in 2022, her only match victory at a major before this incroyable and improbable stroll in Paris, which started in qualifying 19 days ago. Nine victories and just one dropped set later, Emma Raducanu’s tag as the only qualifier to have won a slam is under threat, and the only stress has been how she would pay her hotel bill in the early rounds – not a problem now she’s guaranteed at least £1.2m for reaching the final.
What has made the diminutive Chwalinska’s run even more entertaining is the way in which she’s done it, with her craft and cunning confounding her more powerful opponents, offering a throwback in a sport dominated by huge hitters. But the problem for Chwalinska today is that Andreeva isn’t only able to hit the ball hard – she marries that with huge variety and boasts one of the highest IQs in tennis. In Andreeva, Chwalinska is facing a far more accomplished version of herself.
It means the toughest battle for Andreeva today could lie on her own side of the net: can she maintain her new-found emotional equilibrium and deal with being the standout favourite in the biggest match of her life? It’s going to fun finding out.
La finale commence: 15h à Paris/2pm UK. Restez à l’affût!
The rising star plays hits including Stargazing and Drive Safe to hundreds of fans in Luton.
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Key events
Preamble
Hello and welcome to live, minute-by-minute coverage of Saudi Arabia v Uruguay at the Miami Stadium. Saudi Arabia started the last World Cup with a stunning victory over Argentina. They’d love to do the same another South American giant tonight – not least because it would increase their chances of getting out of a World Cup group for only the second time. The first, as any football nerd worth their loneliness will know, came on their World Cup debut at USA 94.
Uruguay didn’t even qualify for that tournament. They also missed out in 1998 and 2006, but a memorable run to the semi-finals in 2010 reminded everyone of their pedigree – and their ability to attract or cause controversy.
They’ve been a fixture since then and, while it’s hard to see them adding a third triumph to sit alongside 1930 and 1950, they never leave a World Cup without making an impression. Last time around, they and Ghana managed to knock each other out of the competition.
Whatever Uruguay achieve this time round, it won’t be dull, not when they are coached by Marcelo Bielsa.
Kick off 6pm EDT/11pm BST/8am AEST
Rob will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s how Uruguay got here (with a few delays):
Uruguay’s preparations for their opening World Cup game against Saudi Arabia were severely disrupted after their flight from Mexico was hit by multiple delays.
Marcelo Bielsa’s squad had been due to fly from Cancún to Fort Lauderdale early on Sunday afternoon, but paperwork issues relating to the plane led to their initial flight being cancelled.
A second plane was then commissioned to take Uruguay to South Florida, but that flight was also delayed and they eventually arrived for the pre-match press conference at Miami Stadium several hours late.
An unusually taciturn Bielsa played down the impact of the delay on his players, who undertook most of their preparations at a two-week training camp in Montevideo before spending the last week in Mexico. “The flight caused no problems,” Bielsa said.
The Uruguay captain, José María Giménez, was more frank in describing the delays as “difficult”, while others at the Uruguayan Football Association (AUF) were less diplomatic.
“We had some complications,” the Atlético Madrid defender said. “It was difficult, but we took advantage by resting at the hotel. And we just got here later.”
You can read the full report below:
The BBC’s technology editor Zoe Kleinman on the big changes coming down the line for young people online.
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