Kyrgios suspended after a positive cocaine test in Mallorca, the last tournament he played

Four. That is how many matches Nick Kyrgios has played in 2026, and the last of them, a first-round loss in Mallorca on a wildcard, is where he gave the sample that has now suspended him. The International Tennis Integrity Agency provisionally suspended the 31-year-old Australian on 4 August, after a WADA-accredited laboratory found benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, in a sample collected on 22 June. Kyrgios made it public himself on Wednesday: “I made a huge mistake and I take full responsibility for it.”

The case runs on four dates. The sample was taken on 22 June, the opening day of the Mallorca Championships, an ATP 250 on grass. On 17 July the laboratory confirmed the finding. The provisional suspension took effect on 4 August, and both the ITIA notice and the player’s own statement arrived on 19 August. Cocaine sits on the WADA prohibited list as a stimulant and as a substance of abuse, a classification that makes the provisional suspension mandatory and that can also cut the eventual sanction sharply where a case is resolved as recreational use away from competition. While it stands, Kyrgios cannot play in, coach at or attend any event run or sanctioned by World Tennis, the ATP, the WTA, the Grand Slams or a national association. The ITIA says he has the right to appeal it and has not used it.

The tennis around that sample is a short list. In Mallorca he played on a wildcard and lost his opening match to Adam Walton, a fellow Australian who had come through qualifying, 6-3 6-4. He has not played since. Two weeks earlier in Stuttgart, also on a wildcard, he beat the eighth seed Corentin Moutet 6-3 6-4, which stands as his most recent win, then took the first set off the qualifier Sho Shimabukuro and lost 4-6 7-6(5) 6-4. His only other match of the year was a first-round loss in Brisbane in January to Aleksandar Kovacevic, 6-3 6-4. That is the whole season: one win, three defeats, and a ranking of No. 919 with 25 points.

The four seasons behind it are barely longer. Kyrgios has won two matches and lost eight since the start of 2023, and his statement leans on that stretch, on what the injuries cost him physically and mentally, and on how hard he has found accepting that his career is near its end. None of that, he wrote, excuses what he did. His last title came in Washington in August 2022, over Yoshihito Nishioka 6-4 6-3, five weeks after the Wimbledon final he lost to Novak Djokovic 4-6 6-3 6-4 7-6(3), the only Grand Slam final of a career that holds seven tour titles and a peak ranking of No. 13. He has also been one of the loudest voices in the game on doping cases, calling the Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek sagas “disgusting” for tennis and writing of Max Purcell’s 18-month ban that the whole system was “cooked”. He says he is stepping away from public life for 28 days.

News tale, 19 August 2026, sources: ITIA, NOS, api-tennis