Williams Sisters Need a Wild Card for US Open Doubles

Serena and Venus Williams received a women’s doubles wild card for the 2026 US Open on Wednesday. The USTA placed the 14-time major champions on an invite list that also names the Girls’ 18s national champions.

They open on Thursday, Sept. 3, or Friday, Sept. 4, in a first round that now has to live up to two New York titles and a packed Ashe mixed-doubles night that already ended.

The USTA Put Them Next to Junior Champions

The tournament confirmed the pairing in a midday release from Arthur Kapetanakis, then pushed the same line through its own channels. Serena, 44, is in her second event of this US Open after mixed doubles with Carlos Alcaraz. Venus, 46, is already in the singles draw. Neither sister qualified for doubles on ranking.

The USTA said they headline the women’s doubles wild-card list. On that same sheet sit DJ Bennett and Ava Esposito, winners of the American Collegiate Player Wild Card Playoffs, and Bella Payne and Sara Shumate, winners of the USTA Billie Jean King Girls’ 18s National Championships. One more team is still to be named.

That is the invite in plain terms. A pair that used to close slam finals now enters through the same door as college players and 18-and-under champions, because the names still move a night session.

The sister duo is BACK!

Serena and Venus Williams have received a wild card into the 2026 US Open Women's Doubles Championship. pic.twitter.com/YD9traRQ8d

— US Open Tennis (@usopen) August 26, 2026

The official account called it a return of “the sister duo.” The post does the marketing job. It does not have to mention Cincinnati, the knee that ended Wimbledon, or the fact that this will be only their third Grand Slam together since they last won one.

Cincinnati Ended on a Double Fault

They had already had their reunion, and it lasted one match. At the Cincinnati Open on Aug. 17 they lost 2-6, 6-1, 10-8 to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns, both 24 and playing their first event as a team. Associated Press match reports said it was the sisters’ first doubles match together since the 2022 US Open, and their first at a non-major since the 2016 Italian Open.

They dropped the first set, took the second cleanly, then fell behind 6-0 in the match tiebreak. Consecutive double faults from Kostyuk got them to 8-7. Serena put away an overhead to reach 9-8. Venus then double-faulted.

I thought it was fun. I thought it was special. We kicked off a little rust in the middle of the match and just, you know, starting to feel it.

Serena Williams, after Cincinnati doubles, Associated Press

She also told reporters she did not come to Cincinnati to win that event. Venus said they had waited a long time to get back on a doubles court and that they would “find our way to each other.” Fun is a fair description of what New York is buying. A title run is a different claim, and Cincinnati already stress-tested it.

Wimbledon was supposed to be the first stop. Serena took a singles wild card there, lost in the first round to Maya Joint, and hurt her knee badly enough that the planned doubles with Venus came off. She had already cut short a Queen’s Club doubles run with Victoria Mboko after Mboko got hurt, and she played Berlin with Karolina Muchova. The hard-court event in Ohio became the substitute. It ended on a double fault.

Mixed Doubles Already Used the Ashe Spotlight

Before the doubles wild card even landed, Serena had already had her Ashe night. On Tuesday she and Alcaraz beat Erin Routliffe and Lloyd Glasspool 5-3, 4-1 in a shortened mixed format that awards a set at four games. Reuters recorded a 120 mph ace from Serena in that first match, with the crowd gasping. She said she never expected to be back on that court.

Hours later Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli won the mixed quarterfinal in 55 minutes, 5-4(4), 4-1. Cobolli called Serena “the queen of tennis” and Alcaraz “the king of now” before the match, then looked tired after it. Bencic said it was an honour and that she could feel their aura. The tennis was still a quarterfinal loss in a first-to-four format, not a late-round grind.

The mixed event is already over. USA Today reported that Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik beat Bencic and Cobolli 6-3, 1-6, 10-6 in the final for a $1 million top prize. Serena’s New York comeback, as a singles-scale attraction, peaked on Tuesday afternoon. The sister doubles draw does not start until the following week. The USTA now gets a second product out of the same visit.

Venus Williams Enters Singles Ranked 611

The doubles card is the softer of the two favors. Venus already took a singles wild card on Aug. 18, and that one costs a main-draw spot. The US Open player page has her ranked 611 in women’s singles and 100 in doubles. ESPN’s 2026 singles line on her is 0-11.

VENUS WILLIAMS IN 2026 SINGLES

• Age: 46, with a main-draw wild card into Flushing Meadows.
• Tour record: 0-11 in singles this season, per ESPN’s player results.
• Last win: July 2025 in Washington against Peyton Stearns, according to the Associated Press.
• Cincinnati: Lost 6-2, 6-2 to qualifier Emiliana Arango, extending the drought.

AP wrote after Cincinnati that her singles losing streak had reached 13 matches. Deutsche Welle, covering the wild-card fight, noted she had not won a singles match since July 2025. Daily Mail, citing the International Tennis Federation, said she will be the oldest singles entrant at the Open since Renee Richards played at 47 in 1981. She has not won a US Open singles match since 2019.

The other women’s singles wild cards went to Sloane Stephens, the 2017 champion; Carol Young Suh Lee, Reese Brantmeier and 17-year-old Thea Frodin on the American pathway; Leolia Jeanjean and Taylah Preston on reciprocal deals; and Sofia Kenin, who took the last spot on Aug. 22 after the USTA had left one name open. AP had wondered whether that last card might be held for Serena. It was not. Serena is not in singles.

ESPN’s results listing has Venus against Kenin in the first round on Aug. 30, the day the main singles draw starts. If that holds, she plays a former Australian Open champion before she even walks out for doubles with her sister.

Who Shares the Doubles Wild-Card List?

The WTA’s note on the same announcement named the rest of the American doubles invites, and that list is the clearest picture of what the USTA is doing. It is mixing a ticket-selling pair with players who actually need the door opened.

THE OTHER WOMEN’S DOUBLES WILD CARDS

• Montgomery and Krueger: Robin Montgomery and Ashlyn Krueger received a USTA wild card, the WTA said.
• Brantmeier and Broadus: Reese Brantmeier, already in singles off the college playoff, plays with Savannah Broadus.
• Liu and Pareja: Claire Liu and Julieta Pareja took another American invite.
• Bennett and Esposito: Winners of the American Collegiate Player Wild Card Playoffs.
• Payne and Shumate: Winners of the USTA Billie Jean King Girls’ 18s National Championships.
• Still open: One women’s doubles team has not been named.

Those junior and college teams are why wild cards exist on paper. The Williams invite exists because a packed Ashe still answers to their names. Replies under the tournament’s own post treated that as milking a brand and as a sideshow meant to put people in seats for doubles, not as a pair built to reach Sept. 11. The Cincinnati score gives that reading some evidence.

They Never Lost a Grand Slam Doubles Final

The resume is not the dispute. BBC Sport, matching the USTA’s own explainer, said they have never lost a major doubles final together. The USTA credits them with 14 Grand Slam women’s doubles titles, last won at Wimbledon in 2016. Sports Illustrated and the Daily Mail both have them at 27-7 across nine US Open doubles appearances, with titles in 1999 and 2009. USA Today called this the 10th time they will play the event as a team.

The WTA’s Serena archive also lists three Olympic gold medals together from 2000, 2008 and 2012, plus a non-calendar-year Grand Slam from the 2009 Australian Open through the 2010 French Open. They shared the doubles No. 1 ranking for eight weeks. Daily Mail put their last New York match in 2022, a loss to Lucie Hradecka and Linda Noskova in what was billed as Serena’s goodbye at Flushing Meadows. She called that exit an evolution away from tennis. She is back on a wild card.

The USTA notes this is only their third Grand Slam as a pair since Wimbledon 2016, after Roland Garros in 2018 and the 2022 US Open. Ten years after the last trophy, the paper that gets them in the building is the same paper handed to the Girls’ 18s winners.

First Balls Come Sept. 3 or Sept. 4

The women’s doubles final is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 11, in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Getting there would mean a week of matches from a pairing that has played one official set of doubles together in four years, plus a shortened mixed run that died in the quarters. Venus may already have a singles match in her legs by then.

Serena will play only doubles here. Venus will try to do both. The draw can still put them on a show court and sell it as a reunion, because for a first-round crowd that is what it is. Cincinnati already showed what happens when the other team is 24, accurate, and unimpressed.

They are due on court on Sept. 3 or Sept. 4. Until then the wild card is doing the work the ranking no longer does.