UPDATE 6/1/26, 11:20 a.m.: Tennis great Serena Williams is back. Days after reports surfaced that the 44-year-old legend would return alongside world No. 9 Victoria Mboko at the Queen’s Club Championships in London, Williams made it official.
“Queen’s Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter,” Williams said in a statement to The Athletic on Monday, June 1. “Grass has given me some of the most meaningful moments of my career, and I’m excited to be back competing on one of the sport’s most iconic stages.”
She also shared a video via Instagram with apparel partner Nike to tease her return. In the video, captioned “Good news travels fast,” Williams is seen walking onto the tennis court as her phone continues to ding with notifications.
“I gotta change my number,” Williams says while the text on the video reads, “Guess everyone heard the news.”
“Me and Serena have stayed in touch, which is really, really nice, because I really look up to her,” Mboko said in a press conference on Friday, May 29. “I mean, the fact that she even knows me is very, it’s very exciting.”
Mboko added,“She’s my idol, so it’s really cool.”
Original story below:
Fans have long suspected that Serena Williams was planning a comeback, and it appears to finally be a reality with the tennis legend reportedly asking for a wild card into the doubles draw at the upcoming Queen’s Club Championships in London.
Williams, 44, plans to compete alongside world No. 9 Victoria Mboko of Canada, beginning June 8, according to the Wednesday, May 27 episode of the “Served” podcast, hosted by her friend Andy Roddick.
Williams had repeatedly stated she was not returning to professional tennis despite evidence that had emerged to the contrary. Most notably, she re-entered the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s anti-doping testing pool late last year.
After entering the pool, competitors must go through a mandatory six-month waiting period before they can compete in professional tennis tournaments. That period should have expired sometime in the last two months for Williams, who is known to have been in the pool on October 6, 2025.
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Williams last competed at the 2022 U.S. Open where she lost to Ajla Tomljanović in her final match.
When The Athletic broke the news in December that Williams was in the testing pool, she quickly took to X to shut down rumors of a comeback.
“Omg yall I’m NOT coming back,” Williams wrote via X. “This wildfire is crazy.”
But the questions didn’t stop there. She then appeared on Today in late January to discuss her upcoming Super Bowl ad for Ro and her weight loss journey. During the interview, anchor Savannah Guthrie asked her if re-entering the drug testing pool was a precursor for a comeback.
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“I mean, really? Are you asking this on the Today show? Oh my gosh,” Williams replied, adding, “I’m just having fun and enjoying my life right now.”
Guthrie, 54, pressed her more, saying her answer sounded like “a maybe.”
“That’s not a maybe,” Williams said.
The day before Williams’ Today appearance, Porter Magazine published an interview with her where she admitted she was struggling adjusting to life as a retired athlete.
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“No matter how prepared you are to retire, and particularly from doing something every day at such a high level, it’s hard,” she said. “I really prepped myself the best way I could, but it’s something that’s still a little difficult.”
That’s not to say Williams hasn’t embraced the perks of retirement, like being a more “present” mother. (Williams and husband Alexis Ohanian share daughters Olympia, 8, and Adira, 2..)
“I show up as much as I can every single day for the girls,” she told former First Lady Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, on the May 13, episode of their “IMO” podcast. “Because I feel like they mean the most to me, and I feel they need me, and they need to make sure, I wanna raise my children. I’m a person that’s raising my kids, and that’s teaching them how I want them to live and how I want them to be.”
