20-year-old will make his debut at season finale this year in Turin

Rafael Jodar has enjoyed an astonishing 2026 season, in which he has earned himself a place among the biggest names in the locker room at frightening speed. In his first full year on the ATP Tour, the Spaniard has claimed his first title, stood out at big tournaments and broken into the Top 10 of the PIF ATP Rankings, well and truly confirming his arrival on the big stage.

The Madrid native also achieved a rare feat this week: A year after playing in the Next Gen ATP Finals, the year-end event that brings together the Tour’s best 20-and-under talents, he will now compete at the Nitto ATP Finals alongside the biggest stars in men’s tennis. It has been a formidable rise for a talent that seems to know no bounds.

In Turin, Jodar will go head-to-head with some of the icons of the sport; Alexander Zverev, Carlos Alcaraz, Ben Shelton, Daniil Medvedev, Flavio Cobolli, Arthur Fils and Frances Tiafoe will all be there. The Spaniard will be the youngest of all the players competing inside Inalpi Arena. Whatever his results there, the event will provide a golden opportunity to demonstrate that he is moving forward at a different pace to most of his peers.

Players who qualified for the Next Gen ATP Finals and Nitto ATP Finals in consecutive years
Player  Next Gen ATP Finals  Nitto ATP Finals
Alexander Zverev   2017* 2018
Stefanos Tsitsipas  2018 2019
Carlos Alcaraz  2021     2022**
Holger Rune      2022*** 2023
Rafael Jodar  2025 2026
*did not play the event as he had qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals
**did not play due to injury
***withdrew from the tournament, was the first alternate at the Nitto ATP Finals
^Jannik Sinner would have qualified for the 2020 Next Gen ATP Finals (event cancelled due to COVID-19) before making his Nitto ATP Finals debut in 2021

At a rate matched by very few players before him, Jodar has scaled from No. 165 to No. 10 in the PIF ATP Rankings in the space of a season.

Since the inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals in 2017 only a handful of players have managed to progress at the pace of Jodar. The Spaniard will be just the fifth player to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals the year after making his debut at the Next Gen ATP Finals.

The most similar case to Jodar’s would be that of Alcaraz, whose rise on the Tour has perhaps served as inspiration for his compatriot. The Murcia native won the Next Gen ATP Finals in 2021 and then sealed his ticket to the 2022 Nitto ATP Finals as World No. 1. Alcaraz was ultimately injured and unable to compete in the event, but he did blaze a trail to Turin that Jodar has now followed.

Zverev and Stefanos Tsitsipas, who both claimed the title at the season’s grand finale a year after making their Next Gen ATP Finals bow, provide another extreme example of breaking into the elite.

The most recent case before Jodar was Denmark’s Holger Rune, who starred in the Nitto ATP Finals in 2023 after a stunning Next Gen season in 2022 (Rune did not compete at that year’s Next Gen ATP Finals as he was an alternate in Turin).

Jodar will now embark on his first campaign in Turin confident that he can perform on the world’s biggest stages. The Spaniard has notched up positive records at the Grand Slams (7-4) and ATP Masters 1000 events (20-7), proving an innate ability to find his A-game at hugely prestigious events. With two wins over Top-10 players already under his belt, the elite will provide an exciting challenge for a player for whom the sky is now surely the limit.

Editor's note: This story was translated from ATPTour.com/es