{"id":376205,"date":"2026-01-18T02:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T02:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/376205\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T02:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T02:25:08","slug":"australian-open-2026-tv-channel-and-uk-start-times-for-every-session-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/376205\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026 TV channel and UK start times for every session | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Australian Open<\/a> kicks off another season of tennis as the first major tournament gets underway this weekend.\u00a0A total of 128 tennis<\/a> stars will compete for the men’s and women’s singles and doubles titles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reigning champions Jannik Sinner<\/a> and Madison Keys will both compete alongside other big names, including Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>, Iga Swiatek<\/a> and Aryna Sabalenka<\/a>. Melbourne Park will host the Grand Slam, continuing a tradition that has been in place since 1988. But due to the major time difference between the UK and Australia, the matches will take place at unsociable hours for British tennis<\/a> fans.<\/p>\n

Here, Express Sport has all the details on when and where you can tune into the Australian Open<\/a> 2026.<\/p>\n

When does the Australian Open 2026 begin?<\/p>\n

The main draw for the Australian Open will begin on Saturday, January 18, 2026. The women’s singles final will take place on Saturday, January 31, while the men’s final is one day later on Sunday, February 1.<\/p>\n

How to watch the Australian Open 2026 in the UK<\/p>\n

Melbourne is 11 hours ahead of the UK, so the majority of the action takes place overnight and in the early hours of the morning.<\/p>\n

This year’s Grand Slam is set to be a landmark event for UK viewers, as TNT Sports joins Eurosport as the primary broadcaster for the first time. Quest will also be on hand to provide free-to-air daily highlights for those who don’t have a sports subscription.<\/p>\n

Australian Open 2026 UK start time for each session<\/p>\n

Play at Melbourne Park is divided into two sessions: day and night. The early round matches will take place at night, starting at 12am UK time, which corresponds to the day session beginning at 11am AEDT in Australia.<\/p>\n

A second day session, which will feature matches on the Margaret Court and Rod Laver courts, begins at 1am UK time (12pm AEDT). Finally, the primetime matches will take place during the night session, which will commence at 8am UK time (7pm AEDT) and will likely feature the most prominent names as the tournament progresses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Australian Open kicks off another season of tennis as the first major tournament gets underway this weekend.\u00a0A total…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[7307,21399,870,811,101,118,12700,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-376205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-australian-open","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-jannik-sinner","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-section","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}