Boardroom chats with the Australian Open CEO, who dishes on AO 2026, a three-week celebration of tennis, music, food, and culture as the event redefines the fan experience in Melbourne.
The Australian Open (AO) returns to Melbourne in January 2026 with more spectacle, excitement, and innovation than ever before. Expanding into a three-week celebration of elite tennis, entertainment, and culture, AO 2026 will launch with a blockbuster Opening Week featuring the first-ever Million Dollar 1 Point Slam. Fans can also expect a reimagined precinct experience filled with live music, premium dining, and immersive activations that bring the festival to life.
“Australian Open 2025 set a new benchmark, and in 2026, we’re raising the bar even higher,” said CEO Craig Tiley, as the AO continues its evolution into one of the most dynamic and inclusive events on the global sporting calendar.
At the heart of AO 2026 is an updated fan experience that pushes the boundaries of what a sporting event can offer. Among the perks are free entry for kids, affordable family tickets, and the return of favorites like the AO Ballpark, TOPCOURT, and Kids Tennis Day. Fans can also catch the action early with player open practices, qualifying matches, and charity events. Culinary highlights like Shake Shack’s first-ever Australian pop-up and the elevated views from The Highline and the new double-story Grand Slam Oval add to the festival vibe, while the revamped schedule sees both men’s and women’s doubles finals take center stage on the final Saturday.
Whether you’re courtside or soaking up the energy across the precinct, summer in Melbourne promises to be unforgettable.
In an exclusive interview with Boardroom, Tiley offered a behind-the-scenes look at the bold vision driving AO 2026. Reflecting on the tournament’s explosive growth and global appeal, Tiley spoke about the meticulous planning required to deliver a next-level experience that reflects tennis’s rising cultural relevance.
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VINCIANE NGOMSI: What are the advantages of starting off the year with a Grand Slam and specifically, the Australian Open?
CRAIG TILEY: We are lucky because there are a few things. The sun is shining and the temperature’s warm, while most of the rest of the world at that time in the year are huddled up in the cold. You look at your screen and see this great thing happening on the other side of the world, you likely think, ‘I actually want to be there,’ or at very least, ‘I want to watch it.’ Starting the year and being able to have that expectation for sport and entertainment, we don’t take that lightly. We take that as a privilege to be there, and as a consequence, we’ve taken it to be more than tennis. In 2015, Roger Federer called us the ‘Happy Slam,’ and it is very much that when you watch on TV or when you come to experience it, we want you to know that we are very happy about having you there. Not only is it actually the largest sporting event in Australia by a long way, it’s the largest annual sporting event in the Southern hemisphere
Compared to other Slams, people don’t really attribute the Australian Open to tradition, but what are some things that you all are doing to keep the tradition alive of the tournament?
You’ve got a balance between providing a bucket list aspirational experience to a fan and a player, and at the same time, have a respect for where you’ve come from. The tradition of the event — it’s over 120 years old, the Australian Open, and it was played in different cities. And 1988, it moved from Kooyong Lawn, which was iconic grass court to a hardcore event in Flinders Park, which was right next to the city. So more than any other Slam, we’ve had the most changes and the most variability in those changes. But we are focused on making history at the same time. You are going to see a music act like Benson Boone this year that no one really knew much about, but now the world knows about. Or you’re going to have one of the best chefs in the world that maybe is not yet Michelin-starred, but in a year’s time will be. So I’d think we are focused on creating tomorrow’s experience for our fans, both on broadcast and in person.
The Australian Open has found ways to innovate tennis without compromising the traditional elements of the game. How do you and your team continue to challenge yourselves to do that?
That’s the core of everything that we do, and so from a leadership point of view, I tell the team to come and ask for forgiveness, not permission. The approach is just go for it. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, we’ll just make some adjustments and give it a go again. One thing we encourage is every year, the event has to at the minimum be 50% different from the previous year. And that’s a big talk because we’ve got much more permanent infrastructure.
Last year, we decided we’re just going to let fans move around the stadium and not worry about when they have to go to the bathroom or go get their hamburger, beer, and hot dog. And that’s kind of worked out well. We stuck a bar right on top of the tennis court so that someone could sit and have a drink and be sitting right next to the court and watching a tennis match. That kind of created a festival atmosphere. On the court itself, we’ve launched a new electronic line-calling system with massive integrations into the broadcast.
There are some I’m leaving off, but it did start at the very beginning, 10 years ago, when we said the first thing we’re going to do is to take control of our destiny. So when we tell our story, we have people telling the story that we can customize it for every market across the world. And that’s worked really well for us to elevate and amplify the brand and tell the story. So then, to make it an aspirational place for people to come and visit. So, together with telling great stories, making an aspiration, doing as many innovations as you possibly can, I’ve challenged the team on some crazy things, like why can’t we have the world’s biggest zip line coming into the precinct? Or why could you arrive via air? Somehow we are constantly challenging, challenging our team to do things very different. And that’s why when you come to this round open, you’ll be constantly surprised by it.
It’s a lot of work to put on a Grand Slam. What’s the biggest misconception that you’ve heard, and how do you correct people?
These four Grand Slams are major sport entertainment events amongst the best in the world. Over a period of two weeks, we had 1.2 million people come through the gate last year, and we had over 800 players and hired 12,000 staff. So if you compare those to events globally and look at that in the scale, and it’s three weeks now, the US Open was three weeks. They had their best year ever. And one of the United States’ biggest events, you could argue, as far as people through the gate, people watching it globally. And I think that the 2 million in the audience, it’s significant these events, and they’ve all particularly grown and they’ve all grown and amplified with their own brand positioning.
And that’s the uniqueness of the Grand Slams. Ours is, as I said, the Happy Slam. It’s a party, and a lot of people who come to ours don’t even watch tennis. They’ll sit out in our Grand Slam oval, try some of the best food in the world, have some unique drinks, and watch it on a big screen, and not even go sit inside the stadium. So our objective is our audience, particularly this well is very young. We have a lot of young families and a big youth audience, but we do target that segment.
What are some of the things that you learned throughout your career and how you approach it now, managing such a big global sports brand like the Australian Open and Tennis Australia?
I’ve been very fortunate to have played the game, coached the game, won an NCAA title at the University of Illinois. I was recruited to go to Australia and initially to try and help them sort out their performance and play development, and then was offered the tournament CEO role 10 years ago. I think I’ve covered every role in the sport of tennis. I love to learn from others, see what others do. I love to push the boundaries. I love to go for it and make no excuses. And I like finding people who we can work with, who are great at what they do, and giving them the opportunity to really excel. So I think so, yeah, I’m in a dream job and not often people can say that. And what else could be greater than entertaining people and then having big smiles on their faces and saying how much they loved it.
When you meet with the other chairs of the Grand Slam tournaments, how do those conversations go?
I’ve been on the journey for 10 years, so there’s a lot of new faces. But never before has there been such close cooperation amongst the Grand Slams as there is today. We used to have a positioning of cooperative competition because we all wanted each other to do well, but not too well, because everyone wanted to be the king of the hill or the queen of the hill. Those days are gone. We spend a lot of time together, and I think there’s a great future where the Slams can lean in and even do more for the global sport. And we are doing more of that. We’ve got some great chairs now. We’ve got some great CEOs, a lot of diversity. It’s a great thing about our sport in Australia.
More than 50% of the people that come through our gates are women, and lately, a lot more children have attended the Slams. There are so many good things happening now, but I think it does stem from the fact that it’s important to each of us that we each have the most successful event each year. The fact that the United States had the most successful event will boost us, and we’ll have the most successful event, and it’ll boost Roland Garros and Wimbledon. We’ve all been on this journey together in different ways, and people are still riding the tennis wave.
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