Overview
The men's world team championship, played since 1900 — and repeatedly reformatted since 2019.
The Davis Cup is the premier international team competition in men's tennis, contested by national teams since 1900. Ties were historically played over a weekend as best-of-five rubbers, home and away, across a knockout season.
That format was replaced in 2019 by a week-long finals event at neutral venues, a change financed by the investment group Kosmos and widely criticised for removing the home-and-away ties that gave the competition its character. The structure has been revised repeatedly since; a qualifying round still uses home-and-away ties, with a group stage and a final eight.
Season Format
Recent Champions
Most recent first. Seasons still in progress are marked.
History
The competition was founded in 1900 by Dwight F. Davis, then a Harvard student, who bought the trophy himself for a match between the United States and the British Isles. It grew into a global competition of more than 140 nations.
Its greatest era ran from the 1920s to the 1980s, when winning the Davis Cup ranked with winning a major. Australia and the United States have won it 60 times between them. The 2019 restructuring is still contested: attendance and atmosphere at the neutral-venue finals have not matched the old home ties, and several leading players have skipped it.
Governance
The Davis Cup is owned and administered by the International Tennis Federation, which licensed its commercial rights to Kosmos from 2019 until that agreement ended in 2023.