Answer in brief
From 2024–2026, Alcaraz leads Sinner 7–3 across ten matches; the full career record is 17 matches and 10–7. Surface history and official statistics help explain their next match, but do not predict it.
A ten-match window inside a 17-match rivalry
This piece brings together every confirmed meeting between Alcaraz and Sinner — 17 career matches, 10 of them from 2024–2026 — into a single breakdown by surface and turning point, together with three broadcast terms illustrated through the official statistics of one match rather than point-by-point observation that nobody actually carried out.
Seventeen career meetings, with this guide focused on the latest ten
Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have met 17 times on the ATP Tour since 2021, and Alcaraz leads the overall series 10–7. Ten of those seventeen meetings came in 2024–2026 — the very period in which the two players reached each other in Grand Slam and Masters 1000 finals almost every year — and across those ten matches Alcaraz leads 7–3. This guide is built on exactly those ten: they span all three surfaces and offer enough material to compare playing styles without waiting for a future match that has not yet been scheduled.
As of the date this piece was checked, 15 September 2026, Alcaraz and Sinner have no match against each other on the calendar. Sinner last stepped on court on 12 July 2026, when he beat Alexander Zverev in four sets in the Wimbledon final. After that he skipped the tournaments in Montreal and Cincinnati, and on 21 August 2026 he announced his withdrawal from the 2026 US Open: in his statement he wrote that he still needed more time to recover from a right-knee injury. His target for a return is the Asian swing, Beijing and Shanghai, without a fixed date. Alcaraz, meanwhile, had not played for more than four months because of a wrist injury that forced him to withdraw from the Barcelona tournament in April 2026; he played his first match back at the 2026 US Open and went out in the quarter-final, losing to Ben Shelton 7–6(7–5), 1–6, 3–6, 6–1, 6–7(7–10) — a match that finished at 3:33 a.m. and became the latest finish in the tournament's history.
What follows is how to use the history of their ten 2024–2026 meetings to notice more in their next match, whenever and wherever it takes place.
The 2024 season: Alcaraz wins all three meetings on two surfaces
In 2024 the two met three times — at Indian Wells, Roland Garros and Beijing — and Alcaraz won all three. Each of those meetings is broken down separately below.
Indian Wells ends Sinner’s 19-match winning streak
The first of these meetings was the Indian Wells semi-final in March 2024: Alcaraz beat Sinner 1–6, 6–3, 6–2, ending a 19-match winning streak.
Roland Garros brings two Alcaraz comebacks in one match
In the June 2024 Roland Garros semi-final — at the time their second-longest head-to-head meeting, after the 2022 US Open quarter-final (5 hours 15 minutes) — Sinner took the first and third sets, but Alcaraz came back twice over the course of the match and won 2–6, 6–3, 3–6, 6–4, 6–3.
Beijing ends in a deciding tie-break
At the ATP 500 tournament in Beijing, the China Open, Alcaraz again beat Sinner in the final on 2 October 2024, winning 6–7(6–8), 6–4, 7–6(7–3) and taking their 2024 head-to-head to 3–0.
Spring 2025 brings two consecutive clay finals
In May 2025, Alcaraz won another final against Sinner, on clay in Rome, 7–6(7–5), 6–1. A month later the same two players met in a far more decisive final.
Roland Garros 2025: 5:29 and three championship points saved
On 8 June 2025, their longest match to date took place on Court Philippe-Chatrier. Alcaraz won the Roland Garros final 4–6, 6–7(4–7), 6–4, 7–6(7–3), 7–6(10–2) in 5 hours 29 minutes. The turning point came in the fourth set: with Sinner leading 5–3 and Alcaraz down 0–40 on his own serve, Alcaraz saved three consecutive championship points, then won 13 of the next 14 points, moved ahead 6–5 and closed out the set on a 7–3 tie-break. According to ATP Tour and Wikipedia, Alcaraz became the third man of the Open Era to win a Grand Slam title after saving championship points, following Gastón Gaudio at Roland Garros 2004 and Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon 2019; three consecutive saved championship points is the most in any men’s Grand Slam final of the Open Era. The overall match statistics turned out to be almost a mirror image: Sinner won 40% of his return points (77 of 194), Alcaraz 39% (75 of 191); at the net both players converted exactly 67% of their attempts — Sinner 30 of 45, Alcaraz 22 of 33. At the trophy ceremony, Alcaraz turned to his opponent and said he was almost certain Sinner would become a champion — not just once, but many, many times.
Grass is the only surface where Alcaraz has no win over Sinner
Alcaraz and Sinner have met twice on grass, and Sinner won both times. The first was the 2022 Wimbledon fourth-round match, when Sinner was still only establishing himself near the top of the tour. The second time, on 13 July 2025, they met in a final: Sinner won 4–6, 6–4, 6–4, 6–4. For Alcaraz it was his first defeat in a Grand Slam final; for Sinner, his first career Wimbledon title.
Summer and autumn 2025 swing momentum back and forth
In the Cincinnati final in August 2025, Alcaraz was leading 5–0 when Sinner retired from the match — the official score is recorded as 5–0 ret.
Less than a month later, on 7 September 2025, the same two players met in the US Open final — their third consecutive Grand Slam final within a calendar year. Alcaraz won 6–2, 3–6, 6–1, 6–4, his sixth career Grand Slam title.
The gap in that year’s head-to-head began to close in November: in the final of the ATP Finals in Turin, Sinner beat Alcaraz 7–6(7–4), 7–5, securing his second straight title at that event.
Monte Carlo 2026 extends Sinner’s run and returns him to No. 1
On 12 April 2026, in the Monte Carlo Masters final, Sinner beat Alcaraz 7–6(7–5), 6–3 on clay — his fourth consecutive Masters 1000 victory. It was Sinner’s eighth career Masters 1000 title, equal to Alcaraz’s total; according to the tournament’s Wikipedia page, Sinner became the third man, after Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, to win four Masters 1000 titles in a row. The win returned Sinner to the top of the ATP rankings. Alcaraz had been defending his title from the previous year at this tournament.
Three broadcast terms illustrated by the Roland Garros 2025 final
Return quality is not simply the fact that the ball comes back over the net — it is where the player directs it and with how much margin. In the 2025 Roland Garros final, the share of return points won was almost identical for both players, 39–40%, and it was on that particular service game, not the match-wide return numbers, that Sinner failed to convert three championship points: aggregate return statistics for the whole match do not show where the outcome of specific rallies was actually decided.
Change of direction means sending the ball away from the direction the opponent’s previous shot was travelling: cross-court after a shot down the line, or the reverse. This kind of shot shifts the angle of attack and forces the opponent to reset their position for the next shot.
Transition to attack means using a short ball or a weak serve from the opponent to move forward on the court and finish the rally at the net. In the 2025 Roland Garros final both players converted exactly 67% of their net attempts, but Sinner did it more often — 45 approaches against Alcaraz’s 33; more frequent attempts did not mean higher efficiency, since both finished with the same conversion rate.
Why the surface record does not predict the outcome
Across 2024–2026, Alcaraz has won 4 of 5 meetings on hard courts (Indian Wells 2024, Beijing 2024, Cincinnati 2025 and US Open 2025 went to him; the 2025 ATP Finals went to Sinner). On clay it is 3 wins out of 4 (the 2024 Roland Garros semi-final and the Rome 2025 and Roland Garros 2025 finals went to Alcaraz; Monte Carlo 2026 went to Sinner). On grass, Sinner has won both meetings, in 2022 and 2025. The sample on each surface is only two to five matches — not enough to claim that one player is inherently stronger than the other on a given surface.
The players’ form and health on the day of a match also change faster than the statistics of past meetings: as of the date this material was checked, Sinner had not played since 12 July 2026 — he skipped Montreal and Cincinnati and withdrew from the US Open on 21 August, citing a right-knee injury — while Alcaraz had only just returned to the tour after more than four months out with a wrist injury.
The next Alcaraz–Sinner meeting is not yet scheduled
No tournament has yet drawn them against each other again. The only public marker is Sinner’s team’s plan to prepare him for the Asian swing, in Beijing and Shanghai, without a fixed date. Whether both players will reach the stage where they could play each other at these tournaments does not follow from that statement, and this piece does not predict the outcome of matches that have not yet been played.
Practical checklist
- Before the match, check the score of the most recent head-to-head meetings on that surface — and keep in mind that the sample on each surface is small.
- Use official return and net-point statistics when the tournament publishes them — concrete numbers, not a general impression.
- Follow the set-by-set score, not just the final result: several of the finals covered here went to a deciding set or a tie-break.
- Keep in mind the players’ health and current form on match day — they change faster than the historical head-to-head statistics.
Questions and answers
How many times have Alcaraz and Sinner played in their careers?
Seventeen times since 2021. Their first ATP meeting was at the Paris Masters in November 2021, won by Alcaraz; he leads the career series 10–7.
What was Sinner’s score against Alcaraz at Wimbledon 2022?
Sinner won the fourth-round match 6–1, 6–4, 6–7(8–10), 6–3 — their first meeting on grass.
Do return statistics explain Alcaraz’s Roland Garros 2025 comeback?
No: according to official data, the share of return points won was almost identical for both players (39–40% for the whole match) — the outcome was decided by a handful of specific rallies at championship points, not by the overall level of return play.
What is the China Open, where Alcaraz beat Sinner in 2024?
The China Open is a combined event in Beijing: the men’s tournament carries ATP 500 status and the women’s WTA 1000, both held at the same venue under one name. In 2024, Alcaraz won the men’s final in a deciding-set tie-break.
Where can readers check official statistics for these matches?
Match statistics are published by ATP Tour and by tournament organisers — rolandgarros.com, usopen.org, wimbledon.com. The figures in this guide come from Wikipedia’s summary pages for each tournament and from the ATP Tour reports listed in the sources below.