{"id":740390,"date":"2026-06-16T11:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T11:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/740390\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T11:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T11:36:11","slug":"serena-williams-and-venus-williams-will-play-wimbledon-doubles-as-wild-card-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/740390\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena Williams and Venus Williams will play Wimbledon doubles as wild card entry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Serena Williams<\/a> will play Wimbledon<\/a> for the first time in four years, reuniting with her sister, Venus, in the women\u2019s doubles event via a wild card entry, the tournament announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Serena, 44, and Venus, 45, have won the Wimbledon title six times as a pair, plus the singles title 12 times between them \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Their reunion comes as Serena returns to tennis<\/a> after nearly four years away, with Venus having returned from a hiatus of her own at last year\u2019s D.C. Open<\/a> in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Serena is not slated to play singles at Wimbledon, and nor is Venus, but one women\u2019s singles wild card remains unallocated. During a news conference at Queen\u2019s, Serena\u2019s first event back, she said: \u201cI want to play singles and we\u2019ll see if I get there, and if not, that\u2019s not my journey right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 Str\u00fdcov\u00e1 had a combined age of 74 years and 303 days when they won Wimbledon 2023.<\/p>\n

While the other three Grand Slams \u2014 the Australian, French and U.S. Opens \u2014 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\u2019s approach has historically been more outward-looking. Last year was an exception: Two-time champion Petra Kvitov\u00e1 of the Czech Republic was the only player not representing the U.K. to receive a main-draw wild card.<\/p>\n

This year, singles wild cards have been allocated to Bulgaria\u2019s Grigor Dimitrov, the 2014 semifinalist, and to Maja Chwali\u0144ska, the 24-year-old from Poland who reached this month\u2019s French Open final after coming through qualifying. Dimitrov, 35 and now the world No. 170, led world No. 1 Jannik Sinner<\/a> by two sets to love at last year\u2019s tournament before being forced to retire with a serious injury to his right pectoral muscle.<\/p>\n

Chwali\u0144ska, 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Alexander Bublik have received a men\u2019s doubles wild card. There was no singles wild card for Australia\u2019s Kyrgios, 31, who has played the past four years sparingly due to recurrent injuries.<\/p>\n

Dan Evans, the British favorite who is retiring after Wimbledon, did not receive a singles wild card, but two men\u2019s singles wild cards are still to be announced, along with two men\u2019s 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\u2019s Henry Searle, who he is coaching on an informal basis.<\/p>\n

Serena Williams\u2019 comeback continues this week at the Berlin Open, where she is playing doubles with Czech world No. 10 in singles Karol\u00edna Muchov\u00e1. Wimbledon starts June 29.<\/p>\n

Wimbledon wild cards 2026Women\u2019s singles
\nMaja Chwali\u0144ska \ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf1
\nHarriet Dart \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nAlicia Dudeney \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nHannah Klugman \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nMika Stojsavljevic \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nKatie Swan \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nMimi Xu \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nTBA
\nMen\u2019s singles
\nGrigor Dimitrov \ud83c\udde7\ud83c\uddec
\nStan Wawrinka \ud83c\udde8\ud83c\udded
\nArthur Fery \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nJacob Fearnley \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nJack Pinnington Jones \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nToby Samuel \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nTBA
\nTBA
\nWomen\u2019s doubles
\nSerena Williams\u00a0 \/ Venus Williams \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8
\nKatie Boulter \/ Heather Watson \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nMadeleine Brooks \/ Amelia Rajecki \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nJodie Burrage \/ Mika Stojsavljevic \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nFreya Christie \/ Eden Silva \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nHarriet Dart \/ Maia Lumsden \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nAlicia Dudeney \/ Mimi Xu \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nMen\u2019s doubles
\nNick Kyrgios \ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddfa \/ Alexander Bublik \ud83c\uddf0\ud83c\uddff
\nDaniel Evans \/ Henry Searle \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nBen Jones \/ Joshua Paris \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nJohannus Monday \/ Harry Wendelken \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nDavid Stevenson \/ Marcus Willis \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7
\nTBA
\nTBA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serena Williams will play Wimbledon for the first time in four years, reuniting with her sister, Venus, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,569,9045,4963,82,575,593,60173],"class_list":["post-740390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-culture","tag-global-sports","tag-olympics","tag-sports","tag-sports-business","tag-tennis","tag-top-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}