The French Open will retain human line judges for 2026, making it an outlier among tennis’ Grand Slams as others will use electronic line calling.

The French Tennis Federation (FFT) confirmed the decision in a statement Monday, in which it said it “will continue to show off the excellence of French umpiring, which is recognized across the world”, according to vice president Lionel Ollinger. Ollinger’s comments follow FFT president Gilles Moretton last year calling France “the best country for providing referees on the circuit”.

Wimbledon adopted electronic line calling (ELC) in 2025, leaving the Paris tournament as the last of the four tennis majors to use humans to adjudicate whether a ball has landed in or out. Instead, officials rely on marks left by players’ shots on the Roland Garros clay. The line judges make an initial decision, before the chair umpire verifies any contentious ball marks at the players’ request.

Those marks can be illusory, because clay is a “live” surface. It is affected by the amount of red brick dust in different parts of the court, weather conditions and a shot’s trajectory.

Tennis balls compress when they land, creating marks of all shapes and sizes that do not always tell an accurate story of the impact. ELC has also faced occasional problems with malfunctions, and players are largely split over which system they prefer, even when electronic method removes the back-and-forth that can be created by human error.

More difficult is the discrepancy between having ELC at some tournaments and line judges at the French Open. It requires players to rewire their brains according to which system is in place, which some have struggled to do as ELC slowly replaces line judges at events further down the tennis ladder.

After years of relying on ball marks, players have had to reckon with being told not to believe their eyes. Some players, including world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and world No. 3 Alexander Zverev, used their phones to take photos of marks during the European clay-court swing earlier this year.

The Australian Open adopted ELC in 2021, while the U.S. Open adopted it in 2022 after using it on some courts in 2020. When Wimbledon removed line judges earlier this year, All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) chief executive Sally Bolton described the move as “inevitable”. The French Open believes otherwise.

‘There are few scenes in sports that are more anachronistic’

Analysis from Matt Futterman, senior tennis writer

Ah, Roland Garros.

The terre battue, the brass bands, “La Marseillaise”, the Panama hats … And the insistence of the French Tennis Federation (FFT) that human eyes and at-times misleading marks on clay are the best way to determine whether or not tennis balls traveling in excess of 100 mph are in or out.

The rest of the Grand Slams have adopted electronic line calling (ELC), but what is more telling is that most clay-court events have too. Every ATP Tour event uses it; most WTA Tour events do too. It was there at the Madrid Open this year, and the Italian Open too. There were dodgy moments, with players, who have used ball marks to determine the way they see a clay court for years, not yet familiar with disregarding them. And yet they got on with it, accepted the results and suggested that the calibration might need checking afterward. Nothing more.

Then came the French Open, and just as in 2024, contentious calls in close, big matches gave rise to disbelieving debates between chair umpire and player, peering down at the trace of a ball that does not necessarily tell the truth about its bounce. There are few scenes in sports that are more anachronistic than three people standing over a clay mark to determine the outcome of a point. During Zheng Qinwen’s tight quarterfinal loss to Aryna Sabalenka, two slow, floating shots were called incorrectly by line umpires, according to the replay system that the FFT still lets television use, undercutting its own officials with a system it says it does not trust to make calls, while still proclaiming those officials the best in the world.

There is no doubt that ELC is not 100-percent correct, 100 percent of the time. There is that small margin of error to consider. On clay, that margin of error can be visible in a mark. A player can look down and wonder why they are being asked not to believe their eyes. But this exact same process is happening with Hawk-Eye on grass and hard courts — it’s just that the marks left by the ball are far less visible. Everyone trusts it then.

The course of action is to ignore the ball marks, eliminating tiresome discussions with chair umpires that delay play and are as prone to that margin of error as ELC is. Just go back to the men’s singles final in 2024, between Alexander Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz. Alcaraz beat Zverev 6-3, 2-6, 5-7, 6-1, 6-2. Serving at 2-1 and 15-40 in the final set, Alcaraz’s second serve was called out, but the chair umpire checked the mark and called it in. On television, with its access to those electronic images, the mark suggested the overrule was wrong … But within the margin of error. So it could have been right. What matters is that one system of decision-making is trusted.

By maintaining line judges, the French Open does not just maintain its own traditions, which is admirable and also goes against some of the less desirable reasons for cutting out humans, like cold-blooded saving of money. It muddles the entire sport’s adoption of a system which it is still learning to trust on clay. Playing one way one week and another way the next week is silly and confusing for players and fans in the same way that tournaments that end on Wednesdays are.

Factor in how hard it is for players to let go of the knowledge system they have always used, especially during a pressure moment in the sport they have made their livelihood, and there will be consequences of the French Open’s decision that go beyond its fortnight.

(Top photo of Frances Tiafoe and Timo Janzen at the 2025 French Open: Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)