Strangely, so many answers, and all of them are using surrogates like JS and keyboard shortcuts instead of just using a selenium feature:
def newTab(driver, url="about:blank"):
wnd = driver.execute(selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains.Command.NEW_WINDOW)
handle = wnd["value"]["handle"]
driver.switch_to.window(handle)
driver.get(url) # changes the handle
return driver.current_window_handle