Ask most people when the US Open begins and you'll get the same answer: the last Monday of August, when the main draw opens and Arthur Ashe Stadium fills for the first night session. That answer is a week late.
The tournament that the public watches starts August 30. The tournament that the insiders attend starts August 23. It is called Fan Week, and if you have spent years working the calendar the way we have, you know it is the open secret of the entire fortnight — the stretch where you get the magic of the grounds, the stadium, and the city of New York before any of it becomes a logistics problem.
What actually happens that week
Fan Week runs August 23 through 29 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows. The qualifying rounds are played in front of crowds a fraction of the size of the main draw. The grounds are open, the energy is building, and the city has not yet turned its full attention to Queens.
Tucked inside that week are the events that make it worth clearing a calendar for. Roger Federer: An Icon Returns to New York — a one-night-only exhibition under the lights of Ashe on August 25. The Lumineers playing Louis Armstrong Stadium on August 21 to kick the whole thing off. Arthur Ashe Kids' Day. The US Open Mixed Doubles Championship. Stars of the Open. Each one is the kind of ticket that disappears into the hands of people who knew about it in February.
The best week of the US Open is the one the schedule barely advertises.
Why the week before is better
The main draw is a spectacle. It is also, for anyone trying to actually experience it, a squeeze. Hotels in Manhattan harden their rates. Courtside inventory vanishes into corporate blocks the previous winter. The 7 train becomes a relocation exercise. Night sessions end near midnight and the city is still running when you are not.
Fan Week inverts almost all of it. The suites are available before they are spoken for. The grounds move at a human pace. You watch the next wave of players earn their way into the draw in qualifying, which is genuinely good tennis and genuinely good theater. And you are inside Arthur Ashe for a night that nobody outside the building is talking about yet — Federer under the lights, in an exhibition that will not happen again.
For the people we work with, the calculus is simple. The main draw is where the world is. Fan Week is where you want to be.
The New York part of it
None of this exists in a vacuum. The US Open is the only major played inside a major city, and that is the whole point and the whole problem. Flushing Meadows is not a country club. It is a stadium complex in a borough that does not slow down for anyone, on a transit line that runs on its own schedule, in a city that fills every hotel room in a thirty-block radius by the first Tuesday.
That is the part that does not fit on a ticketing website. The seat is the easy part. The week is the work — the right room in Manhattan, the car that actually moves on a Grand Slam night, the dinner reservation that was never going to be available on an app, the routing in and out of Queens that respects the fact that you have been on your feet since noon.
New for 2026, even the grounds require a free Fan Access Pass during Fan Week. A small thing, and exactly the kind of detail that turns an open door into a closed one if nobody is minding it for you.
How we think about it
- The suite before it sells out. Fan Week hospitality — the Luxury Suites inside Ashe — is available before the main-draw inventory disappears.
- The marquee nights, sourced from relationships. Federer's exhibition, the Lumineers, Stars of the Open. These are not general-admission events with a button. They are secured through the people who hold them.
- The New York week, built end to end. The hotel, the car, the dinners, the routing in and out of Flushing. One itinerary, one point of contact, and a week that runs while you watch tennis.
- The option to stay for the main draw. For the clients who want the full two-week experience, the Fan Week week becomes the calm front half of a two-week run.
The (match) point
Many of our clients love the US Open. And we make sure they are able to enjoy the best parts of it.
Whether you like the quiet energy of Fan Week or the crazy adrenaline of main draw, we're here to make everything easy — the right accommodations, great seats, easy transportation, all already arranged. Reach out to see how we can help you get the best out of the experience.
