Serena Williams returns to pro tennis in London doubles comeback

Serena Williams is set to return to professional tennis in doubles at the HSBC Championships at Queen’s Club in London, taking a wild-card entry into the June 8-14 WTA 500 event with 19-year-old Victoria Mboko. The comeback comes nearly four years after Williams last played professionally, and it places one of the sport’s defining figures back on grass at 44, after a retirement that once seemed complete.

“Queen’s Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter,” Williams said, and grass has long been the surface where some of her biggest moments landed most sharply. She last competed at the 2022 U.S. Open, losing in the third round in New York, and later wrote in August 2022 that she was “evolving away from tennis.” The new return was teased on social media with a Nike video and the line “Good news travels fast,” before the tournament posted, “The Queen returns.”

The comeback also reflects how much the sport has changed since Williams stepped away. Williams re-entered the drug testing pool in 2025, a prerequisite for coming back to competition, while women’s tennis returned to Queen’s Club that same year for the first time in more than 50 years. The 2025 women’s event drew 62,000 spectators, and this year’s tournament carries the second-highest prize money among WTA 500 events, with a 35% increase. LTA tournament director Laura Robson called Williams’ return a major moment for the event and its fans, while the WTA framed it as a sign of her enduring competitive fire. WTA chair Valerie Camillo called Williams one of the greatest athletes of all time.

What success looks like now is different from the chase that defined much of Williams’ first act. She is a mother of two, one of only nine singles world No. 1s to return to the WTA Tour after giving birth, and the contours of elite women’s sport have shifted around her. Williams owns 73 singles titles, 23 Grand Slam singles titles, 14 Grand Slam doubles titles with Venus Williams, four Olympic gold medals and 319 weeks at No. 1. She is also the only player to complete a career Golden Slam in both singles and doubles, and her more than $94 million in prize money helped make her one of the highest-paid female athletes in history.

Wimbledon begins June 28, and Williams’ appearance in London has already revived speculation about a further grass-court return. For now, the significance lies in the first step: a wild card, a doubles draw and a reminder that even at 44, Serena Williams still changes the scale of the conversation.