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Having the site of the WTA Finals settled for the next three years – whatever we might think of the location – certainly simplifies the task of getting the women’s tour calendar for 2025 out there.

And on May 16, they released it.

The full sked is here. (There’s no more convenient PDF version available as yet).

The biggest shifts will be in the grass-court season, with much of the charm of the British events leading up to Wimbledon gone or hampered.

A few takeaways

– Whenever this potential additional 1000-level tournament in the Middle East is to happen, it won’t bs in 2025. The Australian summer looks to be intact.

– The WTA 1000s in Doha and Dubai remain one-week events.

–As we reported here more than a week ago, the WTA will add a 500-level tournament at Queen’s Club in 2025. It will take place the first week of the grass-court season, right after Roland Garros.

Scoop: Queen’s Club approved for WTA event in 2025

That means that the longstanding Eastbourne event – a lovely oasis before the madness of a major and generally a tournament well-attended by the top players, will be downgraded to a 250. And with the new restrictions on top players playing 250s the same week as a 500 (which, in that case, is in Bad Homburg).

It also means that the Nottingham 250 event is pushed back a week. And that, instead of being up against another WTA 250 in competing for players, it now will be up against a WTA 500 – with all the restrictions on field that this entails.

***Birmingham – at least for now – is no more.***

Same is true for the longstanding event in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, which will now be up against the new 500 at Queen’s Club. And which will liquidate their field as well.

And it means the lovely tournament in Birmingham disappears altogether, at least as a WTA-level event.

Concurrently with this release, the LTA weighed in with its take on the “new model” grass season.

“Our new grass court calendar has been unveiled for 2025 with the intention of improving the experience for fans and players and offering more fans the opportunity to watch professional tennis,” was the statement on Twitter.

With a “rationale”, explained here.

Surbiton will be history on the men’s side, with that ITF moving to Birmingham and the women’s event there downgraded to an ITF.

“Whilst there will be a drop in the number of Top 100 women competing in Birmingham, we hope that tennis fans appreciate the diversity of seeing a dual gender event which has made Surbiton and Nottingham such a success previously,” the LTA said.

Hard court Madness

– The post-Wimbledon clay-court tournament in Hamburg has been moved up. And that means that there are THREE WTA 250-level clay-court events the week after Wimbledon. Essentially, just one week on the clay instead of two. You’d expect those fields to suffer.

– The Prague tournament in that “second” clay week this year will end up being on hard court in 2025, and compete with the WTA 500 in D.C. – which also will be a week earlier. It will be interesting to see how that shift affects the decisions by the European players to get to North America, as arriving basically in mid-August to prep would mean close to two months on the steamy hard courts. It was already a slog.

– With the Olympics year in 2024 done, the 1000s in Cincinnati and Canada will expand to 12 days to match those in Rome and Madrid (in addition to the longstanding extended tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami, and the newly-extended event in Beijing as of this year

But in the case of these two events, they will be squeezed into three weeks, not four. And that means that the Canadian tournament – in Montreal in 2025 for the women – will end up with a mid-week final.

The last day of the Canadian event is listed as Aug. 7, 2025 – which is also official first day of the Cincinnati tournament. The Canadian events in Montreal and Toronto will have a Sunday start, with the semifinals on a … Wednesday and the final on a … Thursday.

And it also may well mean that players will opt to skip the first one. Time will tell on that one. But certainly the feedback from the players about the back-to-back two weeks events in Madrid and Rome this spring indicates they, too, find it a challenge to play both effectively.