Alexandra Eala named to prestigious TIME100 Next 2026 list

Alexandra Eala has been named to the TIME100 Next 2026 list, the magazine's annual collection of the world's most influential rising stars.

Eala was the only tennis player on the list of "leaders who are shaping the future," broken up into five categories: Phenoms, Artists, Leaders, Innovators and Advocates.

Eala was selected in the Innovators category, and 22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal wrote a blurb on time.com about her game, her maturity and poise, and her breakthrough on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz.

"One of her greatest strengths is precisely her ability to listen, learn, and keep improving," Nadal wrote. "But perhaps more importantly, Alex remains a wonderful person -- warm, approachable, and humble. It isn’t easy to handle becoming a true phenomenon at such a young age, and she deserves a lot of credit for keeping her feet on the ground.

"Now, all that remains is to keep enjoying watching her progress."

Nadal has known Eala since 2018, when she arrived at the Rafa Nadal Academy as a 13-year-old. Seven years later, Nadal recounted, she was the first person he played with after his retirement.

"One day, she asked whether I felt like hitting with her for a while," Nadal wrote. "For the first time in many months, I picked up a racket and played again."

Eala first broke on to the scene in 2025, when she beat three Grand Slam champions to reach the Miami final as a wild card. She's built on that momentum in the year and a half since, going from No. 140 in the PIF WTA Rankings to No. 18. In the process, she's attracted a massive following and fan base not only in her native Philippines, but also globally. She's broken milestone after milestone among Filipina players, and has helped attract fervent interest from a country that had never produced a player in the Top 100.

The crowning achievement of her career came earlier this summer, when she won her first career WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz title in Washington, D.C.