Forbidden Door 2026: Owen Finals and Title Stakes Set

AEW and New Japan Pro-Wrestling return to the SAP Center in San Jose on June 28 with the Forbidden Door card headlined by the Men’s and Women’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament finals—winners set to earn world title shots at All In.

When the Forbidden Door curtain rises on Sunday at the SAP Center in San Jose, the stakes won’t just be about dream matchups. For the men and women, it’s about what comes next—and who earns the right to chase a world title at All In.

For the fifth straight year. AEW is partnering with New Japan Pro-Wrestling and other major promotions to put on the Forbidden Door pay-per-view. The card will feature stars from AEW. NJPW. CMLL and Stardom. including crossover matches and bouts with direct implications for AEW moving forward. The show begins at 7 p.m. ET with the Zero Hour pre-show, followed by Forbidden Door at 8 p.m. ET. Fans can watch on HBO Max, Prime Video, DAZN, Fubo, and PPV.com.

Two of the biggest turning points are already locked in. The Men’s and Women’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament finals will be contested at Forbidden Door, with the winners earning world title matches at All In.

The projected path to those title opportunities starts early. In the TBS Championship Survival of the Fittest qualifying match, Skye Blue faces Maika. The pre-show also includes the AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championship match. with Divine Dominion—Megan Bayne and Lena Kross—holding the titles against Thunder Rosa and Olympia.

From there, Forbidden Door builds toward its nightlong center of gravity. Adam Copeland and Christian Cage defend the AEW World Tag Team Championship against The Dogs—David Finlay and Clark Connors. Shota Umino, the IWGP Global Heavyweight Champion, defends against Pac. In the AEW Women’s World Championship bout, Thekla takes on Starlight Kid.

One match already carries a sense of wide-open chaos: The Young Bucks face El Sky Team—Místico and Máscara Dorada—against Unbound Co.—Shingo Takagi and Titán—in a multi-team clash. Elsewhere on the card, Jon Moxley defends the AEW Continental Championship against Bandido, while Kenny Omega meets Zack Sabre Jr.

The night’s tournament finals put the show’s biggest promise in plain sight. The Women’s Owen Hart Cup final features Mercedes Moné against Maya. The Men’s Owen Hart Cup final is Will Ospreay against Swerve Strickland.

And even before that last word—win and advance—there’s a brutal precedent to endure. In a 6-on-6 Steel Cage match. Team MJF—MJF. Kevin Knight. Kyle Fletcher. Kazuchika Okada. Andrade El Idolo and Jake Doyle—faces Team Briscoe—Mark Briscoe. Orange Cassidy. Roderick Strong. Kyle O’Reilly. Konosuke Takeshita and Darby Allin.

The match most fans will circle first is the Men’s Owen Hart Cup final: Will Ospreay vs. Swerve Strickland. It’s easy to see why. The winner doesn’t just advance a storyline—they earn the right to challenge for the AEW world title at All In.

Both men reached the finals through their own high-pressure runs. Ospreay advanced after beating Samoa Joe and Mark Davis. Strickland earned his spot by defeating Bandido and Brody King.

Their history also adds a sharper edge. Strickland beat Ospreay at Forbidden Door two years ago to retain the AEW World Championship. About a year later on Dynamite. the two fought to a draw. and that result eventually led them to temporarily team up at All In to defeat The Young Bucks. Their chemistry is already established. and the match carries massive stakes because there’s no room for coasting—one winner takes the shot.

Another standout matchup comes in the form of Kenny Omega vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Interpromotional clashes are the point of Forbidden Door, and this one sits near the top of the list. Their most recent singles meeting as opponents happened in the 2018 NJPW G1 Climax, where Omega beat Sabre.

Now they meet again at Forbidden Door after Sabre challenged Omega. Omega has said he hopes a win over Sabre could be the thing he needs to get back into AEW world title contention against MJF. Sabre. for his part. is trying to do more than prove a point—he’ll be chasing the kind of victory that rewrites how quickly he can move back into the conversation.

The women’s title stakes add their own tension: Thekla puts the AEW Women’s World Championship on the line against Starlight Kid. Thekla’s path to this moment runs through Stardom, where she had a lengthy run before joining AEW. Ahead of Forbidden Door. she decided to bad-mouth her former place of employment and challenged a member of the Stardom roster to face her at the pay-per-view.

Starlight Kid is the opponent, and that matchup didn’t land well with Thekla—especially because she has struggled against the masked high-flyer. In their two singles matches against each other, Starlight Kid won both times. She beat The Toxic Spider in 2022 and again in 2023.

Thekla is looking for revenge, and she arrives with momentum. During her title run, she has victories over Kris Statlander, Thunder Rosa, Mina Shirakawa, Jamie Hayter, Alex Windsor and Hikaru Shida.

The sequence of events across Forbidden Door is the clearest way to feel how the card is meant to move AEW forward: tag titles and individual championships get defended. tournament finals decide who gets world title shots at All In. and the interpromotional matchups are built to test who can translate that pressure into momentum.

With Sunday’s show set to run from San Jose—Zero Hour beginning at 7 p.m. ET and Forbidden Door at 8 p.m. ET—the only question left is which competitors turn the night into a launchpad. The Owen Hart finals. in particular. promise a clean break from “what if” to “next. ” because the winners will be walking into All In with something every champion wants: an earned shot at the top.

AEW NJPW Forbidden Door 2026 Owen Hart Cup Mercedes Moné Maya Will Ospreay Swerve Strickland Kenny Omega Zack Sabre Jr Thekla Starlight Kid