Sindhu loses French Open final to world No. 1 An Se Young after taking first game
PV Sindhu lost the French Open women's singles final to world No. 1 An Se Young of South Korea in Paris on Sunday 25 October 2026, going down 21-16, 11-21, 12-21 after winning the opening game.
India’s PV Sindhu lost the French Open women’s singles final to world No. 1 An Se Young of South Korea in Paris on Sunday 25 October 2026, going down 21-16, 11-21, 12-21 after winning the opening game. The final was played at the Arena Grand Paris and lasted 61 minutes.
The 31-year-old Indian, a two-time Olympic medallist and former world champion, took the first game in 20 minutes, using her reach and attacking strokes to move from 15-11 to a 19-14 lead before closing it out. It was only the second time in her career that she had taken a game off An, whom she has never beaten in 11 meetings.
An, the reigning Olympic champion, took control in the second game and levelled the match, then held off a Sindhu fightback in the decider. Sindhu led 8-5 in the third game, but An converted that lead into 11-9 at the interval and pulled away to seal the title.
“I fought for every point, I could win the first game and I was happy about it,” Sindhu said afterwards. “Even in the third set, I should have maintained the lead from 8-5. But unfortunate that she converted that into 11-9. So that’s where I felt the difference was. But a lot of positives to take from this match.”
The win gave An her fourth French Open title in the USD 950,000 French Open Super 750 tournament. Sindhu, ranked 11th in the world, had reached her first French Open final after beating Japan’s Hina Akechi in the semi-finals, and had won the Japan Open in July, her first BWF title since December 2024.
The runner-up finish also extended India’s wait for a women’s singles champion at the French Open: Aparna Popat was the last Indian woman to win the title, in 1998, while Saina Nehwal finished second in 2012.
Image note: no suitable licensed image was found for this piece at drafting time. The only Sindhu photographs located on Wikimedia Commons are licensed under the Government Open Data License - India (GODL), which is outside this edition’s permitted set (public domain / CC0 / CC-BY/SA), and the best available headshot dates from 2016, failing the recent-photo standard. This piece ships imageless pending backfill; see FACTCHECK file.
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