# Is there a ballot for Australian Open 2027 tickets? > The Australian Open has no ticket ballot. AO 2027 tickets went on general sale on 13 August 2026, the earliest on-sale ever, and Ground Pass allocations are capped for the first time. The official route, in order. - Canonical: https://theticketlottery.com/guides/australian-open-2027-tickets - Published 2026-08-17, updated 2026-08-17, facts last verified 17 August 2026 - Source: The Ticket Lottery (https://theticketlottery.com); not affiliated with Tennis Australia or the Australian Open There is no ballot for the Australian Open. No draw, no application, no results email: AO 2027 tickets went on general sale at 12:00 AEST on Thursday 13 August 2026 through Ticketmaster Australia, and they are sold first come, first served until each session runs out. If you have been waiting to be picked for Melbourne, you have been waiting for something that does not exist. That matters more than usual this cycle. Tennis Australia moved the on-sale earlier than ever, roughly seven weeks ahead of the equivalent 2026 date, and capped daily Ground Pass allocations for the first time. The tournament itself runs 11 to 31 January 2027 at Melbourne Park. ## So how do Australian Open tickets actually work? Four routes, in the order they opened for 2027: - **Accessibility pre-sale**, 12:00 AEST on 28 July 2026 to 23:59 AEST on 4 August 2026. Priority access for fans needing wheelchair and mobility bays, ease-of-access seating, enhanced vision seating, or deaf and hard of hearing seating with hearing loops and live captions. Free to sign up for. - **Mastercard pre-sale**, 12:00 AEST on 5 August 2026 to 12:00 AEST on 6 August 2026. Cardholders only, and you have to pay with the Mastercard at checkout. - **AO Extras and tennis community pre-sale**, 14:00 AEST on 6 August 2026 to 23:59 AEST on 12 August 2026. AO Extras sign-up is free, and this is the route most fans can use for early access next cycle. - **General public sale**, from 12:00 AEST on 13 August 2026, via Ticketmaster Australia. Open to everyone, no membership, no code. None of those four is a draw. Every one of them is a sale where the tickets go to whoever gets there and completes checkout. The only thing that is random is your position in Ticketmaster's queue at the instant the sale opens. ## Why people think there is an AO ballot Two reasons, and both are worth separating out. The first is the queue itself. Ticketmaster's waiting room holds everyone who arrives before the on-sale time and then shuffles them into a random order when it starts. Fans see the word "random" and reasonably conclude they have entered a draw. They have not: a ballot decides who gets an allocation over days or weeks, while queue randomisation decides only who is served first, in the next few minutes. The practical difference is that with a ballot, applying at any point in the window is worth the same, and with a queue, being present at the start is the whole game. Our guide on [how ticket ballots work](https://theticketlottery.com/guides/how-ticket-ballots-work) covers that distinction across sports. The second is that the other three majors muddy the picture. Wimbledon runs a genuine free [public ballot](https://theticketlottery.com/ballots/wimbledon-2027-aeltc-public-ballot), and Roland-Garros runs a genuine [Grand Public draw](https://theticketlottery.com/ballots/roland-garros-2027-grand-public-ticket-draw) where you register for a purchase slot. If you follow tennis ticketing at all, two of the four Grand Slams have taught you to wait for a draw. Melbourne and [New York](https://theticketlottery.com/ballots/us-open-2026-2027) simply do not run one. ## What Australian Open 2027 tickets cost The Ground Pass starts at AUD 49 at early bird pricing, held until 12:59 on 30 November 2026, and Tennis Australia notes the Ground Pass price has not gone up since 2019. A Ground Pass gets you the outdoor courts, unreserved seating at John Cain Arena, and the whole AO precinct including Grand Slam Oval and Garden Square. Reserved seats at Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena and John Cain Arena are priced session by session, so a first-round day session and a semifinal are very different numbers. Two cheaper things are easy to miss. Opening Week, 11 to 16 January 2027, has its own ground pass covering qualifying and practice, and practice sessions at Rod Laver Arena are unreserved seating on that pass. And a 7-day Ground Pass covering 25 to 31 January gives unlimited precinct access across the closing week. ## What is capped this year, and what that changes Tennis Australia has capped daily Ground Pass allocations for the first time for AO 2027. Its stated reason is scale: AO 2026 drew 1,368,043 fans across the three-week event, 217,999 of them during Opening Week, and the organisers expect week one of the main draw to be the busiest part of the 2027 event. The cap is a crowd-management decision rather than a ticketing mechanism, but the effect on a fan is real: the cheapest ticket type is now finite per day, so the days people most want are the ones a late buyer is most likely to find gone. If your plan is week one of the main draw on a Ground Pass, that is the combination most exposed to the cap. ## What to do if your session has sold out Official resale through the Ticketmaster Resale platform opened for AO 2027 on 13 August 2026, alongside the general sale. That is where tickets returned by fans who cannot attend reappear, and it is the only resale route the tournament recognises. One exception to know: AO Reserve tickets cannot be resold, so they never appear there. Everything else you find is outside the official route. Melbourne Park does not release a mystery second allocation and there is no ballot to appear later in the year, so a "sold out" session is genuinely gone unless someone returns a ticket into the official platform. Our guide on [what to do when you miss out](https://theticketlottery.com/guides/missed-the-ballot-what-next) walks through the official fallbacks in order. ## How to be ready for the next cycle Because this is a sale and not a draw, preparation beats luck. Sign up free to AO Extras, which is what carries the tennis community pre-sale access and puts the on-sale announcement in your inbox. Have a Ticketmaster Australia account set up and logged in before the on-sale time rather than during it. Decide your session and your fallback session in advance, because the queue is not the moment to browse. And note the direction of travel: the 2026 cycle went on sale in early October 2025, the 2027 cycle in mid-August 2026, so assuming last year's month is exactly how people miss it. Full dates, prices and official sources live on the [Australian Open 2027 record](https://theticketlottery.com/ballots/australian-open-2027), alongside every other [tennis](https://theticketlottery.com/sports/tennis) ballot and sale we track. ## Quick answers **Is there a ballot or lottery for Australian Open tickets?** No. The Australian Open has no public ticket ballot, lottery or random draw. Tickets are sold first come, first served through Ticketmaster Australia, the official partner, after a series of pre-sales. If you have been waiting to be drawn for AO tickets, there is nothing to wait for and nothing to enter. **When did Australian Open 2027 tickets go on sale?** General public sale opened at 12:00 AEST on Thursday 13 August 2026 through Ticketmaster Australia. Three pre-sales ran before it: the accessibility pre-sale from 28 July to 4 August 2026, the Mastercard pre-sale from 5 to 6 August 2026, and the AO Extras and tennis community pre-sale from 6 to 12 August 2026. Tennis Australia calls it the earliest AO on-sale ever. **Ticketmaster put me in a queue. Is that a ballot?** No, and the difference matters. Ticketmaster's waiting room assigns a random position in the queue at the moment sales open, which decides the order people are served in, not whether they are entitled to buy at all. A ballot is an application you submit and wait days or weeks to hear back on. Queue randomisation means arriving before the on-sale time is what counts, and arriving early does not put you ahead of anyone. **How much are Australian Open 2027 tickets?** The Ground Pass starts at AUD 49 at early bird pricing, which Tennis Australia holds until 12:59 on 30 November 2026. It says the Ground Pass price has not risen since 2019. Reserved seats at Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena and John Cain Arena are priced by session. **What is different about AO 2027?** Daily Ground Pass allocations are capped for the first time. Tennis Australia's stated reason for both the cap and the earlier on-sale is demand: AO 2026 drew 1,368,043 fans across the three weeks, including 217,999 in Opening Week, and it expects week one of the main draw to be the part that goes first. **When is the Australian Open 2027?** AO Opening Week runs 11 to 16 January 2027 and the main draw 17 to 31 January 2027, at Melbourne Park. Opening Week covers qualifying and practice, and has its own cheaper ground pass. **What if the session I want is sold out?** Official resale through the Ticketmaster Resale platform opened for AO 2027 on 13 August 2026, and that is the one route where tickets returned by other fans reappear at a controlled price. AO Reserve tickets cannot be resold. Anything outside Ticketmaster is not an official route. ## Event pages - [Australian Open 2027](https://theticketlottery.com/ballots/australian-open-2027) ## Sources - [ausopen.com: Australian Open 2027 tickets, on sale earlier than ever](https://ausopen.com/articles/news/australian-open-2027-tickets-on-sale-earlier-ever) - [ausopen.com: your guide to Australian Open 2027 ticket pre-sales](https://ausopen.com/articles/news/your-guide-australian-open-2027-ticket-pre-sales) - [ausopen.com: ticket information](https://ausopen.com/ticket-info) - [ausopen.com: ticket FAQs](https://ausopen.com/ticket-faqs)