The Canadian Open: Inside Tennis’s Quirkiest Traveling Tournament

If you’ve ever tried to find a tennis tournament called the “Canadian Open” and come up confused, you’re not alone. One year it’s in Toronto. The next, Montreal. The men might be playing in one city while the women play in the other, in the very same week. It’s a scheduling arrangement unlike anything else in professional sports — and it’s exactly what makes the National Bank Open (as it’s officially branded today) one of the most fascinating events on the tennis calendar.

Here’s everything you need to know about the tournament’s remarkable history, its unusual city-swapping format, and why it’s stuck around for nearly 150 years.

The National Bank Open has been drawing spectators to Toronto since 1881, making it the third oldest tennis tournament in the world, trailing only Wimbledon and the U.S. Open</cite>. Some sources rank it as the second-oldest continuously running event after Wimbledon, depending on how you count the format changes over the decades — either way, this tournament predates the automobile, the light bulb’s widespread use, and virtually every other sporting event you follow today.

The very first edition was held at the Toronto Lawn and Tennis Club, and the tournament bounced around — including stints in Niagara-on-the-Lake and a rotating cast of Canadian cities — before returning to Toronto for good in 1968. The event was originally played on clay until switching permanently to hard courts in 1979, aligning it with the surface used at the U.S. Open.

Sponsorship names have shifted plenty over the years too. Tobacco brands backed the tournament for years until Canadian federal legislation banned tobacco advertising, paving the way for Rogers Communications to step in as title sponsor. In 2021, National Bank became the new title sponsor, rebranding the event as the National Bank Open presented by Rogers — though most fans still casually call it “the Canadian Open” or “Rogers Cup” out of habit.

The Toronto-Montreal Shuffle, Explained

Here’s the quirk that trips up even longtime tennis fans: this isn’t one tournament that happens to move locations. It’s actually two tournaments — a men’s ATP event and a women’s WTA event — that swap cities with each other, and swap host cities year over year.

The tournament has alternated between Toronto and Montreal every year since 1981. For decades, the rule was straightforward since 1981, the men’s competition was held in Toronto during even-numbered years and in Montreal during odd-numbered years, with the women’s event doing the opposite in the same season.

But the format got even more interesting in 2021. Since 2021, in even-numbered years the men’s tournament is held in Montreal while the women’s tournament is held in Toronto, and the cities swap again the following year. Prior to 2011, men’s and women’s events were even held in entirely separate weeks; now both tournaments are held during the same week each August, meaning tennis fans across Canada essentially get two Masters-level tournaments happening simultaneously in two different cities.

For 2026, that means the women’s tournament takes place at Sobeys Stadium in Toronto while the men’s event is held at IGA Stadium in Montreal, running index from August 1 through August 13

Why Does It Work This Way?

It comes down to fairness and civic pride as much as logistics. Both Toronto and Montreal are tennis-mad cities with passionate fan bases and world-class facilities, and neither wanted to permanently lose out on hosting marquee stars like Iga Świątek, Carlos Alcaraz, Coco Gauff, or Jannik Sinner. Rather than pick a permanent home and disappoint half the country, Tennis Canada built the rotation right into the tournament’s DNA. It means:

                •            Every city gets a turn hosting both genders. Over a four-year cycle, Toronto and Montreal each get to host the men once and the women once.

                •             No city misses out for long. Fans in either city never wait more than two years to see top-tier tennis return.

                •             The rivalry stays friendly. Rather than competing for a permanent host designation, the two cities essentially co-own Canada’s biggest tennis event.

The Venues Themselves

The two stadiums have their own character. Toronto’s Sobeys Stadium holds 12,500 tennis fans, while Montreal’s IGA Stadium holds 11,500 Sobeys Stadium, formerly known as the Aviva Centre, has served as Toronto’s host venue since 2004, while IGA Stadium in Montreal has gone through its own name changes over the years, having previously been known as Uniprix Stadium and Du Maurier Stadium.

Canadian Champions Have Been Rare — Until Recently

For most of the tournament’s modern history, Canadian players have struggled to win on home soil, which made the tournament’s history sting a little for local fans. But that’s changed in recent years. The most recent Canadian man to win the singles title was Robert Bédard, who claimed the last of his three championships back in 1958 — a drought that has stretched on for decades on the men’s side.

The women’s side has told a very different, and much more exciting, story lately. Victoria Mboko became just the third Canadian woman to win the National Bank Open in the Open Era, joining Faye Urban, who won in 1969, and Bianca Andreescu, who won in 2019. Mboko’s breakthrough came in Montreal, where she started the season ranked outside the world’s top 300 and went on to beat four Grand Slam champions en route to the title, including Coco Gauff in the final. It’s the kind of home-soil Cinderella run that tournament organizers dream about, and it’s added fresh energy to an already historic event.

A Proving Ground for Future Stars

Because it sits in the thick of the North American hard-court swing between Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, the National Bank Open has long served as a launching pad and a measuring stick. It’s a mandatory ATP and WTA 1000-level event, meaning nearly every top-ranked player in the world is contractually expected to show up, which is a big part of why the tournament consistently attracts stacked draws despite splitting its spotlight across two cities.

The Bottom Line

The Canadian Open’s city-swapping format might look confusing on paper, but it’s really a clever solution to a very Canadian problem: how do you keep two great tennis cities happy without picking favorites? By splitting the men’s and women’s draws and rotating them annually, Tennis Canada has built a 145-year-old tradition that keeps reinventing itself every single summer — one city, and one storyline, at a time.

Whether you’re planning a trip to catch the action at Sobeys Stadium in Toronto or IGA Stadium in Montreal, one thing is certain: wherever the National Bank Open lands next, the tennis will be world-class, and the history behind it runs deeper than almost any tournament outside of the Grand Slams.