The buzz was real. Serena Williams will enter the Wimbledon ladies’ singles draw as a wild card, the tournament announced on Sunday.The 23-time major winner last played a competitive singles match at the 2022 U.S. Open, where she lost to Ajla Tomljanović in three sets in the third round. Now Williams, 44, will play singles in addition to doubles with her sister, Venus, at the All England Club.This is not a drill.@serenawilliams will compete in the 2026 ladies' singles at #Wimbledon as a wild card. pic.twitter.com/1vHnDEQ4xm— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) June 21, 2026Williams made her highly anticipated return to tennis earlier this month at the HSBC Championships at Queen's Club, where she played doubles alongside Canadian star and rising phenom Victoria Mboko, the current WTA world No. 9. The pair won their first match, but were prevented from advancing any further after Mboko suffered a knee injury in the singles draw.Williams has won Wimbledon seven times, most recently in 2016. At this point, her return isn’t about proving anything more. She is already the greatest to ever do it, but she wants her daughters to see her play where she has already had so much success.“It’s really about my kids getting to see me play,” she told reporters at Queen’s Club before the tournament. “Olympia is a little older, Adira is very young, but it’s also still moments like that. It’s also just [that] an athlete is the best thing that you can be and the highest place, and having an opportunity to still be able to possibly do that one last time is kind of cool and exciting, so there’s a little of that too.”Since Williams doesn’t have a world ranking to automatically qualify her for Wimbledon, she needed some help to make it happen. That's where the wild card comes in.How do wild-card entries work for Wimbledon?According to Wimbledon’s official website, wild cards are players whose world ranking is not high enough to qualify automatically for the tournament, but who are accepted into the main draw at the discretion of the Committee. Wild cards are usually offered on the basis of past performance at Wimbledon or to increase British interest. Safe to say that Williams fits the bill on both accounts, considering her seven titles at the All England Club. Wimbledon has given out wild cards since 1977, and from 2003, some singles wild cards have been determined by competition.No player has ever won the ladies’ singles title as a wild card, but two have in the ladies’ doubles. Serena and Venus accomplished that feat themselves as doubles wild cards in 2000 and 2002. The Williams sisters have won 14 majors together in doubles, including six at Wimbledon. They enter the ladies’ doubles draw this year as a wild card, as well.On the men’s side, Goran Ivanišević became the only wild card to win a singles title—men’s or women’s—when he did so in 2001.Williams will join seven other wild-card Wimbledon entrants this year. Maja Chwalińska, who just made a magical run to the final at Roland Garros, will also enter the ladies’ singles draw at the All England Club as a wild card. Although Chwalińska’s run in Paris jumped her up to No. 21 in the world, she did not directly enter the main draw because her ranking was too low at the time of the direct entry cut-off date. She will already automatically qualify for Wimbledon next year since she’ll still have the ranking points from her French Open run at that time in 2027.More Tennis from Sports IllustratedAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow