Emma Raducanu has ended her tennis season, pulling out of WTA tournaments in Tokyo and Hong Kong over the next couple of weeks because of illness. She will begin planning for pre-season with coach Francisco Roig, who is carrying on beyond the end of 2025, in an extension of their original agreement.

A representative for Raducanu and a person close to Roig confirmed that their partnership will continue into 2026.

Raducanu, who has been feeling unwell for the past week, and had to retire ill from her match against Ann Li at the Wuhan Open last Tuesday. Raducanu had her blood pressure taken during the match, which was played in oppressive heat and humidity, before retiring down 6-1, 4-1. Raducanu also had her blood pressure taken during Tuesday’s defeat three-set defeat to Zhu Lin at the Ningbo Open, her third defeat from a set up in five matches.

Raducanu ends her 2025 ranked No. 29, having played 50 matches in a season for the first time in her career. The ranking will see her seeded for January’s Australian Open if she isn’t overtaken in the next few weeks, and exemplifies a year in which she has found consistently good results against most opponents after a difficult start. Raducanu endured a man displaying “fixated behavior” toward her at the Dubai Tennis Championships in February, after he had followed her across several preceding tournaments. Raducanu saw the man during her match against Karolína Muchová, approaching the chair umpire in tears during the second game. The man later signed a restraining order issued by Dubai authorities.

Since then, Raducanu has won consistently against players ranked below and around her, and has run some of the top players close, but her defeats to the best in the world have either been one-sided or have come when she has relinquished advantageous positions. Raducanu and Roig, a longtime former coach of Rafael Nadal, agree that she needs to be more aggressive and trusting of her attacking instincts, relying less on her ability to hustle and retrieve. Her overall game has improved since they started working together in August, and in the past month, Raducanu held match points against Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejčíková and top-five player Jessica Pegula, before fading in the third set of their matches.

Finding a way to convert those leads into wins will be a priority for next season, and planning begins now.

‘A higher floor and a familiar ceiling’

Analysis from senior tennis editor James Hansen

Emma Raducanu has built on last year’s comeback from three surgeries by establishing a higher floor — and hitting a familiar ceiling. Playing 50 matches in a season for the first time is a significant step for a player whose career has been so oriented by injuries, and Raducanu has come through testing periods on and off the court to reach the top 32, crucial for the protection it will afford at the Grand Slams and 96-player WTA 10000s if she can stay there.

Hiring and retaining Roig has been key to her development in the second half of the year, after she struggled to find rhythm on her serve in the first few tournaments and then went through a run of losses in February and March. That was punctuated by the incident in Dubai, which Raducanu said left her struggling to breathe properly in the immediate aftermath.

She has found a way to play more aggressively while still using the counterpunching defense that makes her difficult to put away. This has been sufficient to beat opponents she should be beating, and has brought some memorable wins, including a dismantling of 2023 Wimbledon champion Markéta Vondroušová on Centre Court in London.

But Raducanu’s identity has been harder to maintain — or even define — against the best and most devastating attacks on the WTA Tour. She pushed world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka at Wimbledon before ultimately succumbing after losing a first-set tiebreak, and ran her even closer at the Cincinnati Open, but she too frequently looks overwhelmed against players of that caliber, especially world No. 2 Iga Świątek and 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina. The next challenge for Raducanu and Roig is to keep her new floor while raising her ceiling to match her ambitions in the sport.