Davis Cup 2026 (M)

On 8 August 1900, on the grass courts of the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston, the United States and the British Isles played the first international team match in tennis. It had been organised by Dwight Davis, a Harvard student who also played, and he commissioned and paid for the trophy himself: a silver bowl from Shreve, Crump & Low, 33 centimetres high, 46 across and made of 217 troy ounces of silver. That object is what Spanish speakers call the Ensaladera — the salad bowl — and it is still the same one.

A hundred and twenty-six years later, the spoils are wildly uneven. The United States has 32 titles, though the most recent is from 2007. Australia has 28, nearly all of them before 1990. Between them they account for more than half of every edition ever played, and neither is among today's favourites.

Recent history belongs to Italy, who have four and won the first in 1976, when the old formula was still in use. The other three are 2023, 2024 and 2025, back to back: nobody had strung three together since the United States between 1968 and 1972.

There is no single venue here, there are twenty-eight. And that is the rule that matters most when predicting: in the qualifying ties, the country playing at home chooses the venue and chooses the surface. It can lay slow clay indoors to smother a team of big servers, or grass and a fast court to shorten points if its own players live off the first strike. It is decided weeks in advance, on paper, looking at the opponent's ranking.

On top of that comes the other factor: the crowd. Seven or eight thousand people singing the anthem a metre from the court is nothing like a Grand Slam, where the public applauds both sides. In the Davis Cup the home side plays with a genuine push, and top-level players have lost matches here that they would not have lost anywhere else.

The Final 8 breaks both of those at once. It is played from 24 to 29 November at the SuperTennis Arena at Bologna Fiera, indoors on hard court, the same for everyone. Neutral, but for one detail: the host is Italy, who are also the champions.

On 23 November 2025, Italy beat Spain 2-0 in the Bologna final and took a third consecutive Ensaladera. Matteo Berrettini and Flavio Cobolli settled both singles and the doubles was never played: at the Final 8 a tie is three rubbers and two are enough.

The striking part is who was missing. Jannik Sinner, reigning Australian Open and Wimbledon champion, did not appear on the Italian list announced on 20 October. Carlos Alcaraz, world number one, withdrew injured. Which means the final of the competition billed as tennis's World Cup was played without the two best players on the planet, and neither country seemed to feel it much.

That says a good deal about what the Davis Cup is now. It is played in the last week of the year, when half the elite is spent or recovering, and that has turned it into a tournament where having the best player matters less than having the best four available.

There are three doors and all three have to be opened. The first swings between 5 and 8 February: thirteen ties over five rubbers — two singles on day one, the doubles and two reverse singles on day two — at the home of one of the two nations, on whatever surface it picks.

The second is in September, from the 18th to the 20th. Fourteen teams go in for seven places: the thirteen February winners plus Spain, who skip the first round for having been runners-up in 2025. Same format, same home advantage, and only half survive.

The third is Bologna in November, with eight nations: the seven qualifiers and an Italy that goes straight through on two counts, as champion and as host. There the tournament changes nature — three-rubber ties, a neutral court, everything inside one week — and what has been nine months of logistics, surfaces and travel is reduced to six days of back-to-back tennis.