Who is playing exhibitions during tennis off season? Elena Rybakina and Iga Swiatek confirmed for post Christmas Shenzhen tournament

There is certainly no rest for the wicked for most of the top names in the ATP and WTA locker room as during Christmas multiple top stars will be heading to Asia to play exhibitions before the season starts the week after with another confirmed this past week.

The World Tennis Continental Cup will be held on December 26-28, 2025 and features Belinda Bencic, Arthur Fils, Wang Xinyu, Zhang Zhizhen and interestingly Andrey Rublev, Elena Rybakina, Iga Swiatek and Flavio Cobolli.

This will be held in Shenzhen while over in Macau, there is also a two day exhibition around this time held with Mirra Andreeva, Jakub Mensik, Jack Draper, Juncheng Shang and Alexandra Eala involved between December 27-28. Conchita Martinez, coach of Andreeva and Li Na are captains for the two teams in action over there.

Over in Dubai too on December 28, Aryna Sabalenka will face Nick Kyrgios in the Battle of the Sexes so while the season concludes in earnest for many of the top names and then they have a break, it is a very short one.

Carlos Alcaraz, Emma Raducanu, Amanda Anisimova among others will all play exhibitions in America over early December too with details set to still drop about the World Tennis League which is often a fixture of December too with their socials teasing a move to India for 2025 with the tournament usually being in the UAE. Venus Williams also faces Madison Keys in a one off in the coming weeks.

That is often the first event of the season for a lot of the top stars. This with the United Cup albeit not taking place on New Year prior to January 1 this time around but both the teams event that Draper, Raducanu, Swiatek among other others are playing being days after these newly announced exhibitions so many will be on their way to Australia.

Rybakina for instance has already signed up for Brisbane and Adelaide in the early season with both an ATP and WTA event as well as Hong Kong being that week. So for many it is one last warm-up before then.

Albeit it does not follow the same kind of schedule as last year with the exhibitions last year because of the earlier start to the year taking place actually on Christmas Day in some cases. Macau which was played by Rublev and Muchova mainly was concluded on Christmas which meant that the adage of tennis being on all year round also went for that day too.

Not a huge deal is known yet in terms of format for Shenzhen albeit they have said there will be 10 matches so is less likely to follow the teams format Macau will and likely will be just straight knockout.