Serena Williams will play Wimbledon for the first time in four years, reuniting with her sister, Venus, in the women’s doubles event via a wild card entry, the tournament announced Tuesday.
Serena, 44, and Venus, 45, have won the Wimbledon title six times as a pair, plus the singles title 12 times between them — Serena seven and Venus five. Two of those doubles titles, in 2000 and 2002, came after they had entered the tournament through the wild card system. On both occasions, Serena was seeded, but Venus received a wild card to complete the pairing. They won their last one in 2016, when Serena also won the singles title.
Their reunion comes as Serena returns to tennis after nearly four years away, with Venus having returned from a hiatus of her own at last year’s D.C. Open in Washington, D.C.
Serena is not slated to play singles at Wimbledon, and nor is Venus, but one women’s singles wild card remains unallocated. During a news conference at Queen’s, Serena’s first event back, she said: “I want to play singles and we’ll see if I get there, and if not, that’s not my journey right now.”
Were the Williams sisters to win the title, they would smash the world record for the oldest combined age of a Grand Slam-winning team. Hsieh Su-wei (Taiwan) and Barbora Strýcová had a combined age of 74 years and 303 days when they won Wimbledon 2023.
While the other three Grand Slams — the Australian, French and U.S. Opens — ordinarily limit their wild cards to players from those countries, aside from rare exceptions for former champions and a reciprocal system between the Australian and French tennis federations, Wimbledon’s approach has historically been more outward-looking. Last year was an exception: Two-time champion Petra Kvitová of the Czech Republic was the only player not representing the U.K. to receive a main-draw wild card.
This year, singles wild cards have been allocated to Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov, the 2014 semifinalist, and to Maja Chwalińska, the 24-year-old from Poland who reached this month’s French Open final after coming through qualifying. Dimitrov, 35 and now the world No. 170, led world No. 1 Jannik Sinner by two sets to love at last year’s tournament before being forced to retire with a serious injury to his right pectoral muscle.
Chwalińska, who is now world No. 21, would have had to qualify without the wild card, because her ranking was too low for automatic entry when the entry lists were released.
Three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka, who is playing his final season on tour at 41, has also received a singles wild card, while Nick Kyrgios, the 2022 finalist, and Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bublik have received a men’s doubles wild card. There was no singles wild card for Australia’s Kyrgios, 31, who has played the past four years sparingly due to recurrent injuries.
Dan Evans, the British favorite who is retiring after Wimbledon, did not receive a singles wild card, but two men’s singles wild cards are still to be announced, along with two men’s doubles wild cards. Evans, 36, who played doubles with Andy Murray at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, has received a doubles wild card with Britain’s Henry Searle, who he is coaching on an informal basis.
Serena Williams’ comeback continues this week at the Berlin Open, where she is playing doubles with Czech world No. 10 in singles Karolína Muchová. Wimbledon starts June 29.
‘An announcement that will resonate far beyond sports’
It’s difficult to remember a more exciting bit of doubles news in tennis history.
While not a bolt out of the blue, the Williams sisters reuniting at Wimbledon will resonate far beyond sports.
Two players who have transcended tennis for almost three decades, and the most successful pair of sisters in the history of sport, will pair up at arguably the world’s most prestigious event.
The fact that it will be Serena’s first Grand Slam in four years is a huge part of all of this, as well as the fact that it’s been so long since she played doubles with her sister. That it’s Wimbledon adds to the significance given how successful both have been at the All England Club. And their influence extends off the court, given that it was Venus who successfully lobbied Wimbledon to fall into line with the other Slams and offer equal prize money in 2007.
Together, they have been Wimbledon trailblazers ever since they arrived in southwest London as teenagers in the mid-1990s and started dominating the event soon after. Between 2000 and 2010, nine of the 11 women’s singles titles were won by either Serena or Venus. They also won the doubles title together in four of those years.
Now 44 (Serena) and 45 respectively, they have the chance to write more Wimbledon history. And if last week’s performance with Victoria Mboko at the HSBC Championships was anything to go by, Serena absolutely looks ready for the doubles court.
Elsewhere, Chwalińska, Dimitrov and Wawrinka will all be popular wild card choices. The former absolutely merited one after her heroics in Paris, while the latter two’s style and personalities have always been appreciated in SW19. Dimitrov in particular feels like he deserves a break for the cruel luck he suffered when badly injuring his right pectoral muscle last year when leading the eventual champion Jannik Sinner by two sets to love.
The retiring Evans may well feel hard done by after all he’s done for British tennis, including being part of the 2015 Davis Cup winning squad, but wild card decisions go beyond national contributions — and at the very least, he’ll get to say goodbye on the doubles court.
Wimbledon wild cards 2026
Women’s singles
- Maja Chwalińska 🇵🇱
- Harriet Dart 🇬🇧
- Alicia Dudeney 🇬🇧
- Hannah Klugman 🇬🇧
- Mika Stojsavljevic 🇬🇧
- Katie Swan 🇬🇧
- Mimi Xu 🇬🇧
- TBA
Men’s singles
- Grigor Dimitrov 🇧🇬
- Stan Wawrinka 🇨🇭
- Arthur Fery 🇬🇧
- Jacob Fearnley 🇬🇧
- Jack Pinnington Jones 🇬🇧
- Toby Samuel 🇬🇧
- TBA
- TBA
Women’s doubles
- Serena Williams / Venus Williams 🇺🇸
- Katie Boulter / Heather Watson 🇬🇧
- Madeleine Brooks / Amelia Rajecki 🇬🇧
- Jodie Burrage / Mika Stojsavljevic 🇬🇧
- Freya Christie / Eden Silva 🇬🇧
- Harriet Dart / Maia Lumsden 🇬🇧
- Alicia Dudeney / Mimi Xu 🇬🇧
Men’s doubles
- Nick Kyrgios 🇦🇺 / Alexander Bublik 🇰🇿
- Daniel Evans / Henry Searle 🇬🇧
- Ben Jones / Joshua Paris 🇬🇧
- Johannus Monday / Harry Wendelken 🇬🇧
- David Stevenson / Marcus Willis 🇬🇧
- TBA
- TBA
