Coupe Davis

A trophy from Boston

The competition began in 1900 at the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston, when a Harvard student named Dwight F. Davis put up a silver punchbowl for a match between the United States and Britain. Its formal title was the International Lawn Tennis Challenge, but the trophy's donor gave the event the name that stuck. Davis Cup remains the only tennis competition in which the scoreline belongs to a country rather than a player, and that is the whole point of it.

It has grown into what the International Tennis Federation describes as the world's largest annual team sporting competition. By 2023, 155 nations had entered teams. Most of them play in regional zones and lower groups, with a World Group at the top feeding the season-ending finals. Ties are still, by tradition, played with a home captain sitting courtside, a home crowd that is allowed to make noise between points, and a national anthem before play. For a sport that spends fifty weeks a year on individual rankings, that is a different sort of theatre.

The book of champions

The honours board is dominated by two nations. The United States has 32 titles and Australia 28, most of them accumulated in the decades when the two countries traded the cup between themselves. Great Britain and France have ten each, with the British count including the Fred Perry era and the 2015 triumph under captain Leon Smith. Italy has four.

The most recent of those four came on 23 November 2025 in Bologna, when Italy beat Spain 2–0 in the final. That made them the first country to win three consecutive editions since the United States in 1972, a run built on a domestic generation deep enough to cope without its best player. Jannik Sinner was not in the 2025 squad, and Italy went through the week in Bologna without dropping a tie.

The Kosmos years and the way back

The modern shape of the event is the result of an expensive experiment. In 2018 the ITF signed a 25-year, three-billion-dollar partnership with Kosmos, the investment group of the former Barcelona footballer Gerard Piqué. Kosmos swept away the home-and-away knockout rounds that had run for over a century and replaced them with a World Cup-style finals week, first staged in Madrid in 2019 with 18 teams. The inaugural edition suffered from low attendance and scheduling problems, and the 2020 competition was cancelled because of Covid-19.

The ITF ended the arrangement in January 2023, after only five years, and said it would run that year's qualifiers and finals itself, with the Final 8 in Málaga that November. Since then the federation has moved the competition back towards its roots. Home-and-away ties returned to the qualifying rounds, and the season-ending event was slimmed to eight nations over six days. For 2025 the Final 8 moved to Bologna, and it stays there in 2026.

Bologna 2025: the week Italy would not lose

The 2025 Final 8 ran from 18 to 23 November at the SuperTennis Arena at Bologna Fiere, on an indoor hard court. Belgium opened the quarter-finals by beating France 2–0 on 18 November, Italy beat Austria 2–0 on the 19th, and on the 20th both Spain and Germany came through 2–1 against Czechia and Argentina respectively. Spain arrived without world number one Carlos Alcaraz, who withdrew injured shortly before the event.

The match that defined the week came in the semi-final against Belgium on 21 November. Matteo Berrettini beat Raphaël Collignon 6–3, 6–4, and then Flavio Cobolli faced Zizou Bergs in a second singles that went to a deciding tie-break of 32 points. Cobolli saved seven match points and won 6–3, 6–7(5), 7–6(15), tearing his shirt afterwards while the home crowd, in the ATP's report, was sent into a frenzy. 'We fought for our country, for this win, but in the end I realised my dream,' he said.

Spain beat Germany 2–1 the next day. In the final on 23 November, Berrettini beat Pablo Carreño Busta 6–3, 6–4 and Cobolli beat Jaume Munar 6–1, 7–6(5), 7–5, so the doubles was not needed. Filippo Volandri captained Italy; David Ferrer captained Spain. Tennis Majors' review of the week concluded that home support had put enormous pressure on visiting players, that doubles had decided several ties, and that nations relying on one star and neglecting the rest of the squad went out quickly. It also flagged fatigue, with the final coming days after the semi-finals at the end of a long season.

Where it stands in September 2026

Italy did not need to qualify for the 2026 edition. As three-time defending champion and host, they were handed a wild card into the Final 8. Spain, as 2025 runner-up, entered at the second round. Everyone else began in the Qualifiers first round on 5–8 February 2026, when thirteen ties produced the other thirteen second-round teams.

That February round removed two of the biggest names in the record book. Australia, holders of 28 titles, lost 3–1 to Ecuador, and Argentina went out 3–2 to South Korea. Elsewhere Germany beat Peru 4–0, Belgium beat Bulgaria 4–0, India edged the Netherlands 3–2, the United States beat Hungary 4–0, France beat Slovakia 3–1, Canada beat Brazil 3–2, Czechia beat Sweden 3–1, Austria beat Japan 3–2, Croatia beat Denmark 3–1 and Chile beat Serbia 4–0. Great Britain beat Norway 4–0 in Oslo on 5–6 February, with Jack Draper, Cameron Norrie, Jacob Fearnley and the doubles pair of Julian Cash and Lloyd Glasspool all winning under Leon Smith.

The second round is set for 18–20 September 2026, with seven home-and-away ties for seven seats in Bologna: Chile against Spain on clay in Santiago, Germany against Croatia indoors in Halle, Great Britain against Ecuador indoors in London, Austria against Belgium on indoor clay in Vienna, South Korea against India in Seoul, Czechia against the United States indoors in Prague, and Canada against France indoors in Quebec City. The Final 8 then runs from 24 to 29 November 2026 at the SuperTennis Arena in Bologna, again on indoor hard court, with quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final spread over six days.

The British angle

Great Britain's tie against Ecuador is at the Copper Box Arena on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on 19–20 September. The LTA announced the venue on 19 May 2026 and named Cameron Norrie, Arthur Fery, Henry Patten, Lloyd Glasspool and Toby Samuel in the squad. Tickets went on general sale through Ticketmaster from £17. It is the first Davis Cup tie the men's team has played at the Copper Box, though the arena has hosted Billie Jean King Cup ties before.

Smith framed it as the first home tie since 2024 and said a home crowd creating the Davis Cup atmosphere could make a big difference in what he called a tough tie. Ecuador earned their place the hard way, beating Australia in Quito in February, so the visitors arrive as the round's outstanding underdog story rather than as a formality.