Three of the women in the WTA’s end-of-year finals have already won a title at Indian Wells.Sabalenka, as mentioned before, made it to the final this year after losing in the previous two years.Andreeva won the tournament in 2025, and Rybakina won it in 2023.The other five women haven’t ever made it to the finals at Indian Wells.
The WTA Finals schedule will start with a round robin phase, then move on to semifinals and finally the finals.The draw ceremony is set for November 3, and the actual matches will begin on November 8.There will also be a Family Day on November 7, which will feature extra live entertainment and a special food selection for fans.
Sabalenka, Noskova, Rybakina, and Svitolina have advanced to the semifinals of the BNP Paribas Open.
Andrew John covers sports and recreation in the Coachella Valley for The Desert Sun.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Field is set for November’s WTA Finals at Indian Wells
The Player Who Qualified?
The eight players who have made it to the WTA Finals in Indian Wells are now officially set.Karolina Muchova got the last spot after Marta Kostyuk had to leave her second-round match at the Ningbo Open due to an injury.This injury stopped Kostyuk from getting into the top eight players of the season.
Aryna Sabalenka has won three titles and has lost two major finals.
Sabalenka finished second in the Race with 6,560 points and a 47-10 record, the best winning percentage in the field at roughly 82%. She won Brisbane, Indian Wells and Miami, the Sunshine Double of the American hard-court swing. The gap to Rybakina is under 1,000 points, so the year-end No. 1 race is still alive.
What she did not win was a Grand Slam. She reached the finals at the Australian Open and the US Open and lost both to Rybakina. That is the only thing missing from a very productive year, and one reason why the Finals matter to her: she has been a finalist twice, in 2022 against Caroline Garcia and in 2025 against Rybakina, and has never lifted the trophy.
This will be her sixth appearance at the WTA Finals, making her the most experienced player in the field at this year’s edition in Indian Wells. She also won the tournament at the same venue earlier this season, giving her recent success to draw on. Sabalenka still has a chance to finish the year at the top of the rankings, but she will need a near-perfect campaign while hoping Rybakina does not collect too many points in the final weeks of the season.
The WTA Finals also represent an opportunity to claim one of the major hard-court titles still missing from her collection. Given the conditions at Indian Wells and her success there earlier this year, this could be the ideal occasion to do so and avenge a season in which she struggled to turn her consistency into the biggest titles she had hoped to win.
