Serena Williams will play singles at Wimbledon. The All England Club confirmed on Sunday that the seven-time champion has accepted a wild card into the 2026 ladies’ singles draw, taking the eighth and final place the club had held open on the women’s side and transforming what had been a measured doubles comeback into a genuine Grand Slam return.
It will be Williams’ first singles match at a major since her third-round defeat to Ajla Tomljanovic at the 2022 US Open, after which she said she was “evolving” away from the sport rather than retiring. The Championships begin on 29 June, with the singles draw to be conducted on Friday.
The decision ends a week of speculation that Williams herself had fuelled. Asked in Berlin on Tuesday whether she would take the remaining spot, she feigned surprise that one was still available — “Oh my gosh, there are some left?” — and turned the readiness question back on the reporter who posed it before signing off with a line that read, in hindsight, like a statement of intent: she needed to get to work. Wimbledon announced the news with a characteristically blunt social-media flourish, declaring that “this is not a drill.” Williams’ own response on X was typically light: she posted that she had “just finished a mean game of duck duck goose.”
The 44-year-old was already assured of a return to SW19, having accepted a doubles wild card alongside sister Venus, 46 — their first pairing at the All England Club in a decade, and a reunion Williams has said was prompted by daughter Olympia. The pair have won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles together, six of them at Wimbledon, and have never lost a major doubles final.
Williams’ singles comeback to date has run exclusively through the doubles court. She returned to competition at Queen’s Club earlier this month, winning her opening match with Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko before the pair withdrew when Mboko sustained a knee injury. Williams then partnered Karolina Muchova at the Berlin Open, losing in the first round to Giuliana Olmos and Erin Routliffe. Despite the defeat, she said she felt “more nimble” and quicker than at Queen’s — encouraging on a surface that rewards exactly that.
The competitive picture is daunting. Williams holds no singles ranking after nearly four years away, which means as a wild card she could be drawn against any of the other 127 players in the women’s field, including world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, defending champion Iga Swiatek or home favorite Emma Raducanu, when the draw is made on Friday. She had not entered any grass-court tune-up in singles before Wimbledon, and posted footage this week of a practice session at the Aorangi Park courts with her daughters.
History frames the romance of it. Williams has won the Wimbledon singles title seven times — most recently in 2016 — and 23 majors in all, leaving her one short of Margaret Court’s all-time record. She reached the final twice more, in 2018 and 2019, with that record on the line, losing both. No player has ever won the ladies’ singles as a wild card. Whatever the result, the reception is unlikely to be in doubt: Berlin’s crowd serenaded her deep into a losing match, and Centre Court can be expected to do the same.
For a tournament that thrives on narrative, the return of its most decorated modern champion — at 44, with no ranking and everything to prove — is the story of the fortnight before a ball has been struck.
