Serena Williams is headed back to Wimbledon singles, and she announced the good news to her fans on Sunday via Instagram.
The 44-year-old tennis legend will compete in the 2026 ladies’ singles draw as a wild card, Wimbledon announced Sunday, June 21, giving fans a new reason to watch when the tournament begins June 29.
“This is not a drill,” Wimbledon wrote on Instagram alongside a post that read, “Serena Returns,” tagging her in the post.
The singles news comes after Wimbledon announced that Serena and her sister, Venus Williams, 46, will reunite in doubles as wild cards. The tournament shared that update with a photo of the sisters and the caption, “Back together, at Wimbledon.”
Earlier this month, she played at the Queen’s Club Championship with Canada’s Victoria Mboko, winning in straight sets before the pair withdrew after Mboko’s right knee injury. She later played doubles at the Berlin Open with Karolina Muchova. Her last singles match was at the 2022 US Open, where she lost in the third round after saying she was “evolving” away from tennis.
Serena has said her daughter Olympia, 8, helped push her back toward the court. “My daughter, Olympia, told me I should play with Venus,” she said June 16. “She’s always right, so I was like, okay.”
Just last week, her husband, Alexis Ohanian, faced backlash for attending a White House UFC event held on President Donald Trump’s birthday, where UFC fighter Josh Hokit called Michelle Obama “a man.”
Ohanian quickly issued a statement, saying that he left the celebrations long before Hokit’s disgraceful speech.