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Which Australian Open ticket is the best buy — grounds pass, reserved seat, or finals?

Four tiers, a real presale calendar, and one ticket that opens the whole grounds

The Australian Open sells four genuinely different products, not just cheap-vs-expensive versions of the same seat. A Rod Laver Arena reserved ticket also grants access to Melbourne Arena (John Cain Arena), Show Court 3, and every outside court on the same day — but not Margaret Court Arena, which needs its own separate ticket.

Ticket types

Ground Pass (early-bird, until 30 Nov 2026)

US$34

Access to every outside court and the grounds — no reserved seat, walk-up only. The cheapest ticket at the Open, and often the best for close-up access to top players in the first week.

Grandstand (John Cain Arena & Kia Arena)

US$56-84

A numbered seat at John Cain Arena or Kia Arena — price varies by round and session.

Show Court Reserved Seating

US$119-211

A numbered seat at Rod Laver or Margaret Court Arena — price climbs steeply as the draw narrows toward the second week.

Hospitality (Sun 17 Jan, Day Session, Rod Laver Arena)

US$420-2104

AO Reserve hospitality — see the Luxury Guide for the full tier breakdown.

Single-session prices from the most recently published Australian Open pricing. See the Cost Guide for the full trip breakdown, and the Luxury Guide for AO Reserve.

Presale windows open six months out

For the 2027 tournament: an Accessibility presale opened 28 July 2026, a Mastercard presale followed 5 August, the AO Extras presale ran 6-12 August, and general public on-sale opened 13 August 2026. If you're reading this after those dates, best availability — especially for finals sessions — is already behind you; check the official AO resale marketplace linked from ausopen.com/tickets before any third-party reseller.

Concierge pick

AO Ticket Guide — Grounds, Sessions & Finals

Three genuinely different products, one ticketing calendar that starts six months out

Most people treat "buy Australian Open tickets" as a one-step task, and that's exactly where they lose the best sessions to people who understood the calendar. The gap between what a grounds pass and a finals seat get you is enormous, both in price and in what kind of day you'll have, and neither is objectively the "right" choice — a grounds pass on a good first-week day can be more tennis than a single finals seat, just spread across five courts instead of one. What I find most useful here isn't the price breakdown, it's the timing: this tournament now opens ticket sales six months out specifically because it's outgrowing its own supply, and that single fact changes how far ahead a genuine plan needs to start. Knowing the actual presale calendar, not just "buy early," is the difference between a real strategy and a hopeful guess.

Melbourne Park

Worth knowing

—Margaret Court and John Cain Arena night-adjacent tickets can price below their own day session once the main Rod Laver crowd has moved on for the evening — worth checking both time slots before assuming day is always cheaper.
—Night sessions run at both Rod Laver Arena and Margaret Court Arena — Rod Laver's night session is priced and scheduled around the tournament's single biggest match, while Margaret Court's is usually the cheaper way into an evening session.
—The AO Extras presale (roughly one week before general public sale) bundles ticket access with add-ons and has historically had less competition than the general on-sale rush — worth checking eligibility even if you're not a Mastercard holder.

How to book

Booking contacts and lead times for Pro subscribers.

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Outside Courts — Grounds Pass Strategy

The cheapest ticket at the Open, and often the best — if you know when to arrive and where to go

The reserved-seat courts get the marketing, but the grounds pass is where the Australian Open's actual value proposition lives. You're paying a fraction of a Rod Laver ticket for access to five or six simultaneous matches, the freedom to leave one mid-set for a better one two courts over, and a genuine chance at seeing a player before anyone outside the sport knows their name. I've watched more interesting tennis on a grounds pass, court-hopping through an afternoon, than I have from a single reserved seat watching one match start to finish. That's not a consolation-prize argument, it's a real structural feature of how first-week Grand Slam tennis works: there's more good tennis being played simultaneously than any one ticket can show you, and the grounds pass is the only ticket type built around that fact instead of against it.

Melbourne Park

Worth knowing

—Check the Order of Play on the AO app the evening before, not the morning of — this is the single biggest edge for planning which outside court to head to first before the crowd catches up.
—The crowd on outside courts predictably thins out again in early afternoon once the morning rush settles into seats — a good window to move to a court you'd earlier found full.
—1573 Arena and Court 3 both hold 3,000 and are included on a grounds pass with no separate ticket needed, unlike Kia Arena and John Cain Arena which can sell out separately and only offer grounds-pass access to unsold sections.

Get the full picture

The real ticket structure and presale calendar are free above. Unlocking adds our curated tier recommendation for a first Australian Open, plus whether to buy a day or night session — the answer changes depending on which week of the tournament you're going.

US$10Rises to US$15 after 1 December