The Williams Sisters Get One More Night in New York

Serena and Venus Williams will play US Open women’s doubles on Thursday or Friday on a wild card. Venus already lost singles after midnight, and Serena already went out of mixed with Carlos Alcaraz.

The tournament sold a sister reunion after two losses this fortnight, so one doubles match now has to carry three Williams invitations.

The Doubles Wild Card Came After Mixed Ended

The USTA posted a doubles wild card announced Wednesday, August 26, sending Serena, 44, and Venus, 46, back into the women’s doubles draw they won in 1999 and 2009. They last played a major together at the 2022 US Open. The first match is due Thursday, September 3, or Friday, September 4, and the women’s doubles final is booked for Friday, September 11, in Arthur Ashe Stadium.

That card arrived after Serena’s mixed run was already over. She and Alcaraz had been placed in the 16-team mixed doubles field as a wild-card pair, beat Erin Routliffe and Lloyd Glasspool 5-3, 4-1, then lost the quarterfinals to Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli 5-4 (7-4), 4-1. Serena is not in singles. The doubles entry is her second event of this Open, and the only one still live.

The tournament account put the reunion in four words.

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 Open is stretching the Williams name across mixed, singles and doubles because Arthur Ashe still fills after midnight and the doubles courts need the cameras. The sisters are 14-0 in Grand Slam doubles finals, and they are also a first-round team in this stage of the comeback. Both things can be true in the same fortnight.

Venus Williams Lost After Midnight

Venus’s singles night started at 12:13 a.m., the latest start in US Open history, after Novak Djokovic’s 4-hour, 36-minute five-set loss to Mariano Navone. Sofia Kenin, another American wild card, won 6-2, 7-6(7) in 1 hour, 48 minutes. It was Venus’s sixth straight US Open loss since a first-round win in 2019, in a record-extending 26th main draw.

THE MIDNIGHT MATCH

• Start time: 12:13 a.m. on Arthur Ashe Stadium, after a five-set men’s match that ran 4 hours, 36 minutes.
• The score: Kenin 6-2, 7-6(7), in 1 hour, 48 minutes.
• Ball striking: Kenin hit 28 winners and 21 unforced errors; Williams hit 13 winners and 24 unforced errors.
• The tiebreak: Williams led 6-2 and earned four more set points, then Kenin took her first match point.

Williams had been down 4-2 in the second set, saved a break point, and won three straight games for 5-4. She held three set points on Kenin’s serve in the 10th game and could not convert. At 5-5 she saved four break points and served for the set at 6-5. Kenin held, then wiped out the 6-2 hole in the tiebreak. Williams spoke afterward to a small group of reporters and would not treat the singles loss as the end of the week.

I don’t think I should have to. My mind is fully focused on that: how I recover from this completely insane evening and get ready for the next one.

Venus Williams, after the first-round loss, Arthur Ashe Stadium

She also said it is not easy to find rhythm at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. in a first round, and that Kenin played some of her best tennis of late. Kenin, 27, was playing only her sixth WTA main-draw win of 2026. She next faces No. 3 Jessica Pegula, who beat Elena-Gabriela Ruse 6-3, 6-2 in the day session.

Kenin Used a Card Held for Serena

On August 18 the USTA named seven of eight women’s singles wild cards and left one open. Four days later it awarded the final women’s singles wild card to Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion, after holding it while Serena stayed out of singles. Kenin then drew Venus in round one, two wild cards sharing a court that emptied well after midnight.

The International Tennis Federation lists Venus as the oldest singles entrant here since Renee Richards played at 47 in 1981. The singles list around her was a mix of former champions, reciprocal deals, and American juniors, including 17-year-old Thea Frodin, the USTA Girls’ 18s national champion.

THE EIGHT SINGLES WILD CARDS

Kenin was the card that did not go to Serena, then the player who ended Venus’s singles week. The doubles wild card, issued four days after Kenin’s singles award, put both sisters back in the building anyway. The Open got a Venus night on Ashe, a Serena mixed night with Alcaraz, and still has the sister pairing on the schedule.

Fourteen Doubles Majors, Two in New York

Together they have won 14 Grand Slam women’s doubles titles, all of them as a pair, and they have never lost a major doubles final. The US Open titles came in 1999 and 2009. They also won Wimbledon six times (2000, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2016), the Australian Open four times (2001, 2003, 2009, 2010), and Roland Garros twice (1999, 2010). Olympic gold arrived in 2000, 2008 and 2012. They shared the doubles No. 1 ranking for eight weeks.

The last of those major doubles titles was Wimbledon in 2016. The USTA notes that this Open is only their third Grand Slam doubles appearance since then, after Roland Garros in 2018 and the US Open in 2022. In nine US Open doubles appearances they are 27-7. In 2022 they lost the first round to Lucie Hradecka and Linda Noskova 7-6(5), 6-4, on a night Ashe treated as a farewell, and Serena then lost her singles third round to Ajla Tomljanovic.

That 2022 doubles night was supposed to close the pairing. Serena later said she was evolving away from tennis. The 2026 card reopens the same court with the same names and a thinner body of recent results.

Cincinnati Ended on a Double Fault

The 2026 reunion did not start in New York. It started in Ohio, on a wild card, against Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns, and it ended on Venus’s serve.

THE 2026 PATH BACK TO FLUSHING

1. June 2026: Serena returns first in doubles after nearly four years away, then takes a Wimbledon singles wild card.
2. Wimbledon: Serena loses her first-round singles match to Maya Joint, injures her knee, and the sisters withdraw from a planned doubles entry. Serena called the knee “a little traumatic experience, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
3. August 18: In Cincinnati, their first match together since 2022, they lose 6-2, 1-6, 10-8 to Kostyuk and Stearns. The same day, Venus receives a US Open singles wild card.
4. August 22: Kenin receives the eighth women’s singles wild card.
5. August 25: Serena and Alcaraz win mixed 5-3, 4-1, then lose the quarterfinals 5-4 (7-4), 4-1.
6. August 26: The USTA awards the sisters a women’s doubles wild card.
7. August 30-31: Venus loses to Kenin in a match that starts at 12:13 a.m.
8. September 3 or 4: Women’s doubles begins.

In Cincinnati they dropped the first set, took the second 6-1, then fell behind 6-0 in the match tiebreak. Serena hit two service winners to get the breaker back on serve. Consecutive double faults from Kostyuk made it 8-7, and Venus then served the match-ending double fault at 8-9. Serena still sounded glad to be out there.

I thought it was fun, it was special, it was good. We were starting to feel it. It was really cool to be able to do this again.

Serena Williams, after the Cincinnati first round

Venus said they had waited a long time to get back on a doubles court and that they find their way to each other. “This is our first time playing together in forever, and I think we’re really getting into our stride,” she said. The next stride is a Grand Slam first round with no opponent named yet.

Who Else Received a Doubles Wild Card?

The sisters headline the women’s doubles wild-card list, which otherwise reads like the junior and college pipeline the singles list also tried to feed. Two named American pairs came through official playoffs and national championships. One more team was still listed as to be announced on the USTA’s August 26 release.

THE WOMEN’S DOUBLES WILD CARDS

• Williams and Williams: The 14-time major pair, opening September 3 or 4, with the final set for September 11 on Ashe.
• DJ Bennett and Ava Esposito: Winners of the American Collegiate Player Wild Card Playoffs.
• Bella Payne and Sara Shumate: Out of the USTA Billie Jean King Girls’ 18s National Championships.
• One team to be announced: Still open on the August 26 list.

Men’s doubles cards went to pairs such as Jackson Withrow and Nate Lammons, Mac Kiger and Aleksandar Kovacevic, plus college and boys’ 18s teams, with two men’s teams also still to be named. The women’s list is shorter, and the Williams line is the one the tournament pushed in public. The college and 18s pairs are the ones who would have had an easier path into a draw that did not need a 1999 champion and a 2009 champion on the same side of the net.

Thursday or Friday Is What Remains

As of Wednesday, September 2, the sisters still have not played a US Open doubles point. Venus’s singles week is over. Serena’s mixed week is over. The remaining date is the first round of women’s doubles, on Thursday or Friday, against an opponent the tournament has not yet posted in public.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The window: First match Thursday, September 3, or Friday, September 4.
• The final: Friday, September 11, in Arthur Ashe Stadium if they were to get there.
• The recent form: A Cincinnati match tiebreak loss and a mixed quarterfinal loss already this trip.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The opponent: Not named in the USTA’s public wild-card release.
• The court and session: Not posted as a night-session Ashe booking in that same release.
• A further singles path: Serena is not in the singles draw; Venus is out.

Venus already said her mind was on how she recovers from an insane evening and gets ready for the next one. That next one is now the entire Williams stake in this Open, a first-round doubles match that the tournament announced after mixed was finished and that Venus will play after a 12:13 a.m. loss.