From Nice to Roland Garros

The Riviera clay season has been extraordinary. Sinner won the Monte-Carlo Masters for the first time, claiming his first clay title at this level and extending his winning run to 22 consecutive Masters matches. Sinner's first Monte-Carlo title was the opening chapter of the most dominant clay court season any player has produced in years — five Masters 1000 titles in a row before Roland Garros even began. The courts of the Monte-Carlo Country Club, terracotta red above a glittering sea, started a run that the sport has watched with a growing sense of witnessing something historic. And now the clay season reaches its conclusion.

Madrid came and went. Rome followed. And now, on 18 May, the most important clay court tournament in the world opens its gates at the Stade Roland Garros in Paris — a 42-acre complex in the 16th arrondissement where the red clay is a slightly different shade from Monaco's, where the courts are carved into the city rather than perched above the sea, and where the scale of the occasion is something that Monte-Carlo, for all its magnificence, cannot match. This is the Grand Slam.

For the Luxuria client who has spent the spring on the Riviera, the journey from Nice to Roland Garros is not a departure from the season. It is the season reaching its peak.

Monaco gives you the clay at its most intimate. Paris gives you the clay at its most significant. The journey between them is the journey of the season itself.

THE JOURNEY

Nice to Paris. Two Hours. A Different World.

The TGV from Nice Ville to Paris Gare de Lyon takes five hours and forty minutes — a journey that carries you from the Mediterranean through the Provençal countryside, past Avignon and the Rhône valley, and into the Gare de Lyon with time to think about the week ahead. Or there is the flight: forty-five minutes from Nice Côte d'Azur to Charles de Gaulle, which is rather less contemplative but gets you to the city by lunchtime.

Either way, the contrast is immediate and deliberate. The Côte d'Azur is warmth and open skies and the sense of space that only a coastline provides. Paris in late May is city, dense, complex, endlessly stimulating, the chestnut trees in the Bois de Boulogne in full leaf and the terraces of the Porte d'Auteuil filling with the tennis crowd that gathers here once a year from every corner of the world. The clay is the common thread. Everything else is different, and the difference is part of the pleasure.

THE LUXURIA APPROACH  We design Nice-to-Paris clay season packages that combine a Monte-Carlo Masters week with a Roland Garros experience — treating the two tournaments as connected chapters in a single extraordinary journey rather than separate trips. The logistics are handled entirely: transfers, hotels, tickets, restaurant reservations in both cities. You simply move through the season.

THE TOURNAMENT

Roland Garros. 18 May – 7 June 2026.

The French Open is the second Grand Slam of the year and the only one played on clay — which makes it, for the serious tennis enthusiast, the most technically absorbing of the four majors. The clay surface rewards patience and movement and the construction of points over time. The rallies are longer. The tactics are more visible. The physical demands are extraordinary, and the players who win here are those who combine physical endurance with mental fortitude in a way that hard courts and grass never quite require.

The Stade Roland Garros itself is a complex of remarkable character. Philippe-Chatrier, the main court, seats just under 15,000 and has a particular atmosphere — serious, knowledgeable, intensely French — that is unlike any other Grand Slam stadium. Suzanne-Lenglen, the second show court, is where some of the finest tennis of the fortnight is played, its smaller capacity creating an intimacy that the main court's scale occasionally obscures. And the outer courts — particularly in the first week, when the full draw is in play and the world's finest players can be found on courts 7 and 8 — offer the kind of close, unmediated access to great tennis that the tournament's global profile should theoretically make impossible.

The 2026 Edition — What to Watch

The story of this Roland Garros begins, in a sense, with an absence. Carlos Alcaraz — the two-time defending champion, the player who dominated this tournament for two consecutive years — will not be in Paris. A wrist injury sustained at the Barcelona Open ended his entire clay court season, ruling him out of Rome and Roland Garros alike. He had been aiming for a third straight title, having won last year's final against Sinner in a match widely described as one of the greatest in Roland Garros history — saving three match points and coming back from two sets down in five hours and twenty-nine minutes. That absence reshapes the entire picture.

Into that space steps Jannik Sinner — and he steps into it as perhaps the most dominant force in men's tennis since Djokovic at his peak. Five consecutive Masters 1000 titles this season: Indian Wells, Miami, Monte-Carlo, Madrid, Rome. Twenty-nine consecutive match wins entering the tournament. World number one, and the overwhelming favourite for a title that would complete his career Grand Slam — the one major that has eluded him, the one that would place him alongside the very greatest in the history of the sport. Last year he held three championship points in the Roland Garros final before losing. This year, there is no Alcaraz. The clay court form Sinner has shown in 2026 is the finest sustained run the sport has seen since Djokovic in 2015–16, and Roland Garros now looks like his to lose.

The draw without Alcaraz opens the door to others. Alexander Zverev, three times a finalist at Roland Garros, arrives with the form and the motivation of a player who knows this may be his best opportunity. Novak Djokovic, three-time champion and the third seed, remains a genuine threat that no one is wise to discount. And the home crowd will follow Arthur Fils with particular intensity, a first-time Grand Slam champion from this draw suddenly the most realistic prospect it has been in years. In the women's draw, Coco Gauff arrives as the two-time defending champion — her combination of power, movement and clay court composure making her the clear favourite for a third consecutive title.

How to Experience It Properly

Roland Garros rewards those who know it. The outer courts in the first week, where top-ten players can be found within metres of a standing audience, are among the finest experiences in the sport — and they are available on a simple grounds pass to anyone who arrives early enough to claim a position. Court Philippe-Chatrier in the second week, when the draw has narrowed and every match carries the weight of a Grand Slam quarter-final or semi-final, is where the tournament reaches its emotional peak. The evening sessions, introduced in recent years, have added a theatrical quality to the main court that the afternoon light, however beautiful, cannot replicate.

Food at Roland Garros has improved dramatically in recent years. The brasserie behind Philippe-Chatrier, the terrace bars along the central promenade, and the premium hospitality options above Suzanne-Lenglen all offer something worth planning around. And the Bois de Boulogne, immediately adjacent to the complex, provides a morning walk or an evening stroll that makes the city feel, briefly, like the countryside it once was.

LUXURIA  Luxuria designs Roland Garros packages with the same bespoke care we bring to Monte-Carlo — the right tickets for the right sessions, premium hospitality where it genuinely adds to the experience, hotels chosen for proximity to the complex and quality of their own merits, and the daily briefings that mean you always know where to be. We treat the French Open as the Grand Slam conclusion to the clay court season we begin on the Riviera in April.

BEYOND THE COURTS

Paris in Late May.

The partner who spent the Monte-Carlo week sailing between Cap Ferrat and the Lérins Islands now has Paris — and Paris in late May is one of the finest versions of itself. The city is warm but not hot. The terraces are full but not crowded in the way of July. The Jardin du Palais Royal is in flower. The restaurant bookings that seemed impossible in January are merely difficult in May, and Luxuria has made them months in advance.

For non-tennis partners, Roland Garros week in Paris offers everything the city always offers — the Musée d'Orsay and the new cultural quarter around the Seine, the covered passages of the 2nd arrondissement, the morning markets of the Marais — plus the particular energy of a Grand Slam week, when the world's finest athletes and a genuinely international crowd fill the city's restaurants and bars with a vitality that makes even familiar Paris feel heightened. The 16th arrondissement, where Roland Garros sits, has its own pleasures: the Musée Marmottan's extraordinary Monet collection is five minutes from the complex, and the Bois de Boulogne offers a morning run or a boat on the lake that feels very far from the clay court tension unfolding nearby.

The children who spent the Riviera week snorkelling off Cap Ferrat and kayaking below Antibes now have the Eiffel Tower, the Musée des Arts et Métiers, and the particular delight of a city that has always known how to engage young visitors. Luxuria designs the Paris days with the same care as the Riviera ones — activities for every member of the group, a city that works for everyone, and the tennis at its heart.

The clay season begins above the Mediterranean and ends in Paris. The journey between them — the shift from Riviera warmth to Parisian energy, from the intimate Masters to the Grand Slam stage — is one of the great arcs in sport. Luxuria designs it as a single, continuous experience.

 THE CLAY SEASON AWAITS

Nice. Monaco. Paris.

One season. Designed entirely for you.

Luxuria designs clay court season packages that begin on the Côte d'Azur and culminate at Roland Garros — treating the Monte-Carlo Masters and the French Open as what they are: two chapters of the same extraordinary story, connected by the same red clay and the same cast of the world's finest players. The 2026 French Open runs from 18 May to 7 June. The best tickets, hospitality and hotel positions are allocated well in advance.

Tell us what you want from the season. We will build it — Nice to Roland Garros, every detail handled, the clay court journey done properly from first match to last.