BREAKING: Serena Williams handed Wimbledon singles wild card
Serena Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam champion, has secured a wild card for the Wimbledon ladies’ singles. This confirms her highly anticipated return to major competition, escalating her comeback to professional tennis after her 2022 retirement.
Serena Williams, 2026 | © Action Plus / PsNewz
Serena Williams has received a wild card for the Wimbledon ladies’ singles, the All England Lawn Tennis Club confirmed on Sunday, setting up a Grand Slam singles return for the 23-time major champion.
The 44-year-old takes the final ladies’ singles wild card for the 2026 Championships, which begin on 29 June. Williams announced her comeback to professional tennis earlier this month after leaving the pro Tour in 2022, and was already entered in the ladies’ doubles alongside her sister Venus.
The singles wild card marks a significant escalation in a comeback that, until now, had been confined to doubles. Williams made her return at the Queen’s Club, partnering Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko to a win over the third seeds — her first professional victory in nearly four years.
That run ended when Mboko withdrew with a knee injury.
“Do you think I’m ready for singles?”
She then moved to the Berlin Open with a new partner, world No. 10 Karolína Muchová. The pair lost 6-4, 6-4 to Erin Routliffe and Giuliana Olmos in the first round – the first defeat of the comeback. It was only Williams’ third match since returning to competition.
Her latest words on the situation were pronounced on Wednesday, after this match. Serena Williams had refused to commit. Asked whether she would take the last Wimbledon ladies’ singles spot, she deflected with a smile, calling it “the question of the hour” and admitting she had not realised one was still open. “Oh my gosh, there are some left?” she replied, before turning the readiness question back on the journalist who posed it: “Do you think I’m ready for singles?” She ended the exchange with neither yes nor no, saying only that she needed to get to work.
Asked how she felt physically, Williams said she had felt “more nimble… more sturdy and quicker” than at Queen’s, noting that quickness is what grass demands.
At 44 years and 276 days, Serena Williams will become the second oldest player to compete in the Wimbledon women’s singles, after Martina Navratilova, who was 47 years and 246 days old during her last appearance in 2004. Navratilova has won Wimbledon nine times between 1978 and 1990. Navratilova had played the second round.
Williams’ record at the All England Club is among the most decorated in the game’s history. She has won seven Wimbledon singles titles (2002, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016) and counts 23 Grand Slam singles titles in all — one short of Margaret Court’s all-time record.
Serena’s history with Wimbledon
Twice in that span she came within a match of an eighth Wimbledon crown. In 2018, in only her fourth tournament back after giving birth to daughter Olympia, Williams reached the final but lost 6-3, 6-3 to Angelique Kerber in just over an hour. It was her third defeat in a Wimbledon final, and victory would have tied Margaret Court’s all-time record of 24 majors.
She returned to the final the following year with the same prize at stake, but Simona Halep produced a near-flawless display to win 6-2, 6-2, becoming the first Romanian to take the Wimbledon singles title. Williams collected the runner-up salver for a second year running, the record still one win out of reach.
Her last two appearances at the Championships ended in pain rather than triumph. In 2021, Williams retired from her first-round match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich after slipping on the Centre Court grass and injuring her leg, her first-ever first-round exit at Wimbledon.
She returned a year later, in 2022, after a long layoff, but lost a three-hour first-round epic to France’s Harmony Tan, ranked 115th, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6(7), saving one match point before falling in a deciding tie-break. It proved to be her final Wimbledon singles match before stepping away from the tour later that year at the US Open, where she had reached the third round.
