Tennis Championship Wimbledon · 139th Edition · 2026

Tennis Championship Wimbledon: The Complete Guide — History, Format, Records & 2026

Your single home for the Tennis Championship Wimbledon — how it began, why it’s still the only Grand Slam on grass, how the format and rules actually work, every all-time record, and what’s different about the 2026 Championships.

What Is the Tennis Championship Wimbledon, Exactly?

The Tennis Championship Wimbledon — officially The Championships, Wimbledon, and almost universally just called Wimbledon — is a tennis tournament held every year at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC) in the Wimbledon district of southwest London. It’s organised by the AELTC in partnership with the Lawn Tennis Association, and it’s one of the four Grand Slam events — alongside the Australian Open, the French Open (Roland-Garros), and the US Open — that make up the sport’s most prestigious calendar fixtures.

What separates Wimbledon from the other three majors isn’t prize money or prestige alone — it’s the surface. Wimbledon is contested entirely on outdoor grass courts, the original surface tennis was invented for, and it’s the only Grand Slam still played on it. The Australian Open moved to hard courts in 1988; the US Open switched from grass to clay in 1975 and later to hard courts; the French Open has always been clay. Grass produces a faster, lower-bouncing game than any other major, which is part of why Wimbledon has historically rewarded serve-and-volley players and big servers in a way the other Slams don’t.

The tournament runs for a fortnight in late June and early July every year, traditionally starting on the last Monday of June or the first Monday of July. The men’s and women’s singles draws hold 128 players each, with the Gentlemen’s and Ladies’ Singles Finals closing out the tournament on the final Saturday and Sunday.

The Founding Story: How Wimbledon Actually Began (1868–1877)

Wimbledon’s origin has nothing to do with tennis. On 23 July 1868, six men met at the offices of The Field — a Victorian country-sports magazine — and founded the All England Croquet Club. Croquet was experiencing a genuine national craze in mid-Victorian England, and the founders believed there was demand for a club that organised serious competitions at the highest level. The club’s first ground sat on four acres of meadowland near Worple Road, Wimbledon.

Lawn tennis — a recently devised outdoor variant of the older indoor game of “real tennis” — was added to the club’s activities in 1875–76, largely to offset waning interest in croquet. In April 1877, the club renamed itself the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club to reflect the shift.

The first Championship itself was, by design, a fundraiser. The club needed money to repair a broken pony-drawn lawn roller used to maintain its grass courts, and on 2 June 1877, the committee — at secretary John H. Walsh’s suggestion — decided a tennis championship for amateurs would cover the cost. Committee member Henry Jones drafted a new code of rules specifically for the event, replacing the laws previously administered by the Marylebone Cricket Club (the then-governing body of real tennis). With only minor later adjustments — the net was lowered the following year, and the service line moved closer to the net — Jones’s 1877 rules are still recognisable in the modern game.

Twenty-two men entered the Gentlemen’s Singles — the only event held — each paying a one-guinea entry fee. The final, originally scheduled for 16 July, was delayed four days by rain (a pattern Wimbledon has maintained ever since, mostly involuntarily). On 19 July 1877, Spencer Gore, a 27-year-old rackets and cricket player, beat William Marshall 6–1, 6–2, 6–4 in just 48 minutes in front of roughly 200 spectators who’d each paid a shilling to watch. Gore received a silver challenge cup worth 25 guineas, donated by The Field’s publisher, plus 12 guineas in prize money.

The lawns at Worple Road were arranged with the principal court in the middle and the others around it — which is exactly where the name “Centre Court” comes from. The name stuck even after the club relocated decades later, even though the court is no longer literally at the centre of the grounds.

Full Wimbledon History Timeline

Wimbledon Through Two World Wars

Wimbledon has been cancelled outright three times in its history: during the First World War (1915–1918), the Second World War (1940–1945), and in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Second World War interruption is the more dramatic of the two: the AELTC grounds were repurposed for wartime use, serving partly as an air raid precautions headquarters and partly for agricultural and military training use. In October 1940, the venue was struck directly by five 500lb bombs during a Luftwaffe air raid, destroying 1,200 seats in Centre Court — damage that wasn’t fully repaired until 1949, four years after the Championships resumed in 1946. That the structure survived at all, given the scale of destruction across London during the Blitz, is often cited as an early data point in Wimbledon’s reputation for institutional resilience.

Format, Draw Size and Rules, Explained

Wimbledon runs to the standard Grand Slam structure with a handful of its own quirks that even regular viewers sometimes get wrong.

Draw size and entry routes

Sets, tiebreaks and seeding

• Sets format: Men’s singles and men’s doubles are played best-of-five sets; every other event is best-of-three.
• Tiebreaks: Played at 6–6 in any set except a deciding set, which now requires a two-game lead rather than the old advantage-only rule.
• Seeding: 32 players are seeded in the Gentlemen’s and Ladies’ Singles; 16 teams are seeded in doubles events.
• Middle Sunday: Traditionally a full rest day for 134 years, this was permanently scrapped in 2022 — Wimbledon is now a continuous 14-day event.
• Curfew: An 11:00 PM BST curfew applies to Centre Court, a rule unique among the four majors, driven by local planning and transport conditions rather than the sport itself.
• Dress code: Players must wear almost entirely white — the strictest dress code in professional sport, with coloured trim capped at 1cm.

Why Grass? The Surface That Defines Wimbledon

Grass is the fastest surface in tennis — the ball moves quicker off the bounce and sits lower than on clay or hard courts, which compresses reaction time and historically rewarded big serves and net play more than any other major. It’s also the most demanding surface to maintain: grass wears as the tournament progresses, which is why baseline patches visibly thin out by the second week, and it dries slowly after rain, which is the root cause of Wimbledon’s long-standing reputation for rain delays.

At one point, three of the four Grand Slams were played on grass. The US Open switched to clay in 1975 and later to hard courts; the Australian Open moved to hard courts in 1988. Wimbledon never followed — grass remains central to the tournament’s identity, even as the AELTC has periodically discussed (and dismissed) the idea of changing it.

Trophies and Traditions

Winners don’t keep the original trophies — both the Field Cup (1883) and original Challenge Cup (1886) had to be replaced after running out of room for new names, so since then champions receive a replica while the originals stay in the Wimbledon museum. A black plinth with a silver band was added to the men’s trophy in 2009 once the original ran out of space for future winners’ names.

Beyond the silverware, Wimbledon’s culture is built on traditions found nowhere else in tennis: the all-white dress code, strawberries and cream as the signature spectator snack, the Royal Box for invited dignitaries, and The Queue — a fan tradition dating back to 1927, where supporters camp overnight for a chance at same-day tickets. Wimbledon also holds the longest continuous sponsorship in sports history: Slazenger has supplied every tennis ball used at the Championships since 1902.

All-Time Wimbledon Records

Wimbledon 2026: What’s New This Year

The 2026 Championships are the 139th edition, running 29 June – 12 July. Defending champion Jannik Sinner headlines the men’s draw after Carlos Alcaraz withdrew with a wrist injury; Aryna Sabalenka enters as women’s favourite alongside defending champion Iga Świątek. The standout storyline of the year is Serena Williams’ return to singles competition via wildcard — her first tournament appearance since retiring after the 2022 US Open.

How Wimbledon Compares to the Other Grand Slams

Wimbledon is the oldest of the four by 14 years, and it took the longest of the majors to reach equal prize money for men and women — the US Open got there first, in 1973, more than three decades before Wimbledon followed in 2007.

FAQs

Tennis Championship Wimbledon (tennischampionshipwimbledon.com) is an independent editorial site. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC), the LTA, the ATP, the WTA, or any official Wimbledon commercial partner.