February is usually the shortest month of the year, but it can also feel like the longest stretch in the tennis calendar. This is the month when the tour hardly pauses for breath and players scatter across continents chasing ranking points and prize money. But as draws filled up and titles lifted in over 15 tournaments, two tennis retirements have been announced as two careers quietly reached their end.
Two Tennis Retirements in February 2026
1. Valeria Bhunu
Valeria Bhunu was Zimbabwe’s highest-ranked singles player in recent memory. She is a former Top 500 player on the WTA Tour, peaking at 497th in singles, and at the time of her retirement was ranked 637th. Bhunu, 30, won three ITF titles during her career, with the most recent one coming in Hillcrest, South Africa, last July.
Bhunu earned just under $50,000 in career prize money, but confessed that a huge chunk of that money went into proving her innocence for a doping violation almost five years ago. After an unsuccessful appeal, Bhunu was banned for three years for testing positive for Mesterolone (prohibited) and was cleared to return to competition in 2025. Her comeback lasted 12 months and she officially filed for retirement with the ITIA in February 2026.
2. Fernanda Contreras
The second retirement in February was also on the WTA Tour. Former top 200 player Fernanda Contreras retired at 28 due to recurring injuries. After a breakout 2022 season in which she qualified in three of the four Grand Slams, while registering a win on her main draw debut at the French Open, Contreras played just 13 times in the last two seasons because of health issues.
Her final singles tournament was in an ITF tournament in Zagreb last June, and she played her last match at the WTA level in doubles at the Guadalajara Open in September. Contreras played college tennis at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2019. She earned over $400,000 in career prize money.
Main photo credit: Eric Bolte-Imagn Images