The big change at ATP Shanghai in 2026

The ATP Shanghai has undergone a major change compared to its 2025 edition. According to reports, the courts' speed has increased by 10 points, making it one of the fastest tournaments of the season following players' complaints last year about the slowness and conditions they encountered.

According to @TennisTV, the CPI this year at the M1000 in Shanghai is 42.2. This makes it 10 points faster than last year. Players complained in 2025 that the court and the balls were very slow, so this year they have stepped up to resemble what Shanghai usually was. It is the fastest year since 2017, when it was 43 points.

— José Morón (@jmgmoron) October 8, 2026

Last year, the ATP Shanghai was full of surprises, and one of the talking points was how slow the courts were and how heavy the balls felt. This resulted in the famous final between cousins Valentin Vacherot and Arthur Rinderknech, where it was the Monegasque player who ended up taking the most important title of his career to turn around his ranking. However, this year the scenario has completely changed, as its CPI is 42.26.

The fastest year of the tournament since 2017

The change has been so significant that one has to go back to 2017 to find a similar scenario in the tournament when the CPI was 43 points. This will obviously benefit big servers and specialists in this type of surface, so those players who felt comfortable in last year's edition will need to readapt their style if they do not want to be caught off guard from the get-go.

This is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, El gran cambio del ATP Shanghái en 2026