Forbes has released its latest ranking of the highest-paid athletes, and the top 50 says two things about where sports money is sitting right now: every athlete on it is a man, and six of them are still under 25. Among that younger group are tennis rivals Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, who are not just collecting trophies. They are collecting the kind of endorsement money that tends to arrive when a sport decides you are the future.
Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner lead tennis’ next money wave
Carlos Alcaraz, the 23-year-old Spanish star with seven Grand Slam titles, lands at No. 32 on Forbes’ 2026 list. His total earnings over the past 12 months are estimated at $61.5 million.
That breaks down into:
- $22.5 million from tournament winnings
- $38 million from off-court income, including sponsorships and other commercial deals
Sinner, currently ranked world No. 1, follows at No. 50. The 24-year-old Italian, who has five Grand Slam titles, earned an estimated $54.6 million across the same period.
His split is slightly different:
- $22.6 million in on-court earnings
- $32 million away from competition
The two have become tennis’ most reliable new-era pairing, a rivalry warm enough that every match does not feel like a corporate stress test. Their places on the list show how quickly that kind of sporting narrative can become a business category of its own.
Who are the other under-25 athletes on the list?
Alcaraz and Sinner are joined by four other athletes under 25, spread across soccer and basketball. The group is small, but not exactly struggling.
The other young earners are:
- Erling Haaland, soccer, $80 million
- Anthony Edwards, basketball, $69 million
- Vinicius Jr., soccer, $60 million
- Cade Cunningham, basketball, $58.6 million
The mix is telling. Soccer continues to produce global commercial names at a young age, while the National Basketball Association remains one of the most powerful pipelines for athlete income in the United States.
For tennis, the presence of Alcaraz and Sinner matters beyond the numbers. The sport has been trying to move past the Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic era without looking like it walked into a meeting without an agenda. These two, at least financially, are giving it a fairly confident answer.
Cristiano Ronaldo still sits far above everyone else
At the very top of the Forbes ranking is Cristiano Ronaldo, who earned an estimated $300 million over the past 12 months. The 41-year-old soccer star is more than $100 million ahead of the next athlete on the list, which is a sentence that does not need much decoration.
Ronaldo’s year also included his engagement to Georgina Rodríguez, whose widely discussed engagement ring in August gave the internet one more reason to discuss his finances. Not that the internet needed encouragement.
The rest of the top five spans boxing, soccer, basketball and baseball:
- Cristiano Ronaldo, soccer, $300 million
- Canelo Álvarez, boxing, $170 million
- Lionel Messi, soccer, $140 million
- LeBron James, basketball, $137.8 million
- Shohei Ohtani, baseball, $127.6 million
The full top 10 draws from several sports, including baseball, golf, boxing, basketball, soccer and racing. In other words, the richest athletes are not all being made by one machine. They are coming from sports with enormous broadcast deals, global fan bases, major sponsorship markets, or, in several cases, all three.
Why no women made the top 50 again
For the third consecutive year, no female athlete appears on Forbes’ top 50 list. That absence is not a footnote. It is one of the clearest measures of how uneven sports earnings remain, especially once endorsements, league structures and prize money are added together.
When Forbes published its ranking of the highest-paid women in sports in December, tennis player Coco Gauff led the list with $33 million. That is an enormous figure by almost any normal human standard. It is also $21 million less than Sinner’s $54.6 million, which is the lowest total on the main top 50 list.
The last woman to make the overall top 50 was Serena Williams in 2023, when she earned $45.3 million. Williams has since announced her return to tennis, but her past placement still underlines how rare it has been for women to break into this particular ranking.
Since 2012, only three other women have appeared on the overall list, and all were tennis players:
- Maria Sharapova
- Li Na
- Naomi Osaka
That tennis pattern is not random. The sport is one of the few with equal prize money for men and women at its biggest events. All four Grand Slam tournaments have offered equal winnings since 2007. Even then, the broader commercial gap has remained stubborn.
Tennis still dominates women’s sports earnings
The December women’s ranking also showed how much tennis continues to anchor female athlete earnings. Gauff was No. 1 with $33 million, followed by Aryna Sabalenka at $30 million and Iga Swiatek at $25.1 million.
Skier Eileen Gu ranked fourth with $23.1 million, making her one of the few non-tennis athletes near the top of that list.
The contrast with the men’s top 50 is sharp. Male athletes are represented across a wide spread of major sports, while the women’s list is still heavily dependent on tennis and a smaller number of global endorsement stars.
That makes Alcaraz and Sinner’s rise feel like two stories at once. On one hand, they are young athletes entering the highest commercial tier of global sport. On the other, their presence at the bottom end of the men’s top 50 still sits far above the best-paid women in the world. The money is moving, yes. It is not moving evenly.
