The WTA Finals is women's tennis's season-closing championship — the eight singles players and eight doubles teams who finished atop the year's points race, contesting the most prestigious title outside the four majors. It dates to 1972, when the inaugural edition was held in Boca Raton, Florida, under the Virginia Slims banner — predating the WTA Tour itself. The singles trophy carries Billie Jean King's name; the doubles trophy honors Martina Navratilova. From 1978 the event anchored at Madison Square Garden for over two decades before going nomadic, passing through Munich, Madrid, Doha, Istanbul, Singapore, Shenzhen and Guadalajara on the way to its current residency in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
What sets it apart is the format. Rather than a single-elimination bracket, the eight qualifiers are split into two round-robin groups, each player guaranteed three matches before the top two from each group advance to the semifinals. A bad opening day doesn't end your week, but every set matters for the group-stage tiebreak math. Played indoors on hard court in November, it rewards flat, first-strike tennis with no weather or sun to break up rhythm — a different test from the open-air majors that decide the rest of the season.
The roll of champions is a register of the sport's defining eras: Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova traded the title through the Madison Square Garden years, with Steffi Graf, Monica Seles and later Serena Williams extending the lineage. The round-robin pressure cooker has produced some of the era's most consequential finals, often functioning as a referendum on who truly owned a given season when the majors were split among several hands.
The move to Riyadh marked a substantial escalation in stakes, with the event reportedly offering record prize money — among the largest purses in women's sport — alongside a multi-year hosting commitment that keeps the season's final act in the Middle East through this edition.