Women’s tennis took another step toward long-awaited parity with men’s after the WTA announced new prize money and calendar arrangements on Tuesday.

WTA and ATP, equal prize places until 2027

One of the main pillars of this new strategy is to create a path towards prize equality with progressive increases. The combined (with ATP) WTA 1000 and 500 events will reach equal prize money by 2027, and the one-week WTA 1000 and 500 events by 2033.

As for the revised WTA calendar, the WTA 1000 tournaments (which will bring the total to 10) will include several two-week tournaments. This applies to tournaments in Rome (2023), Beijing (2024), Cincinnati and Toronto/Montreal (2025), in addition to tournaments in Indian Wells, Miami and Madrid. Additional WTA 1000 tournaments will be held weekly in Doha, Dubai and a yet to be determined location.

This new strategy also aims to enhance the value of the WTA 500 tournaments by reducing overlaps in the calendar and introducing new entry rules to improve the quality of participating players.

In the new calendar, the number of WTA 500 tournaments will increase to 17, including Abu Dhabi, Adelaide, Berlin, Brisbane, Charleston, Eastbourne, Monterrey, San Diego, Seoul, Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Tokyo, United Cup, Washington, Zhengzhou, as well as as well as two more tournaments, the names of which are still unknown.

It is worth noting the growth of the tournament in Strasbourg, which will now be of the 500 category.

In the weeks when the WTA 500 and 250 tournaments run concurrently, players in the top 30 must compete in the WTA 500 tournaments, except for some breaks (two per year).

At the WTA 250 level, the WTA expects a 34% increase in prize money for each of these tournaments for the period 2023-2033. In a week with only one WTA 250 tournament, only one player from the top 10 can participate, according to Agerpres.