Serena Williams is back. Alex Eala is seeded. Iga Swiatek defends her title. Here’s The POST’s primer on the most highly anticipated Slam of the year.
We’re about to dive into the second half of the year, and for tennis fans, that means only one thing: it’s Wimbledon time!
This year’s tournament opens today, June 29 (yay!) and runs until July 12, featuring 128 singles players in both the ladies’ and gentlemen’s draws, and 128 doubles players (64 teams) in each doubles event.
From the immaculate grass courts of the All England Club to the fashion-forward crowd hanging on every serve, Wimbledon is tennis at its most refined and exciting—where history meets the modern game, and champions are made on a stage that honors both legacy and innovation.
Here’s The POST’s primer on the most highly anticipated Slam of the year.
Related story: Serving looks: The 8 most stylish women in tennis right now
Related story: Serving up the new generation
Wimbledon fun facts
First held in 1877, Wimbledon is the oldest tennis tournament in the world. Also called The Championships, it is one of the four annual Grand Slam tennis events—along with the Australian, French (Roland-Garros), and U.S. Opens—but is the only one still played on natural grass. Among the four Slams, Wimbledon is considered by many to be the most prestigious.
The tournament is famous for its unique traditions: players must wear almost entirely white clothing, the Centre Court is still uncluttered with ads, and strawberries with cream are a staple snack. Wimbledon is said to serve hundreds of thousands of portions each fortnight, with fans consuming about 28,000kg of strawberries (nearly two million) and 7,000 liters of cream throughout the two-week games.
This year, The New York Times reports that 64,500 tennis balls will be used, with at least 2,000 balls delivered to the practice courts each morning. Filipino fans will smile at the next bit: Wimbledon tennis balls are manufactured in the Philippines! The balls are made by Dunlop Slazenger, whose production site moved to Bataan when its UK factory closed down in the early 2000s.
Another quirky fact is that Wimbledon has a trained American Harris hawk named Rufus, who patrols the skies each morning to scare off pigeons. He has been doing this job for 18 years. When off-duty, he is quite the social media star with a loyal following of over 9,000 fans on Instagram.
A fact that some don’t know is that in Wimbledon (and the other three Slams), the champions do not bring home the trophy. What the ladies’ champions receive instead is a three-quarter-sized replica, engraved with their names on it, exactly like the real thing but smaller.
The ladies’ singles trophy is a silver salver, also known as the Rosewater Dish or Venus Rosewater Dish, first awarded to the champion in 1886. It has a mythological theme, with Temperance shown at the center and gods appearing in the four reserve panels on the boss. Around the rim, Minerva is depicted presiding over the seven liberal arts: astrology, geometry, arithmetic, music, rhetoric, dialectic, and grammar.
Related story: Alex Eala wins Birmingham Open, earns over ₱2 million ahead of Wimbledon
Related story: Filipina firsts, global goals: Alex Eala and Bianca Bustamante meet at the “Oscars of Sports”
Prize money and ranking points at stake
Per the official WTA website, this year’s Wimbledon has a collective prize money pool of £64.2 million ($84.5 million), representing an overall increase of 20% compared to 2025.
The women’s and men’s singles champions will earn £3.6 million ($4.75 million), also a 20% increase from last year. Being a Grand Slam, 2,000 ranking points are available for both draws.
The defending champions
Polish tennis superstar Iga Swiatek is looking to win her seventh Grand Slam and to defend her first All England Club title, which she won last year with a jaw-dropping 57-minute 6-0, 6-0 thrashing of American Amanda Anisimova. That win made her a Grand Slam champion on all three surfaces, and an Australian Open win away from a career Grand Slam. According to Matthew Futterman of The New York Times, Iga’s sensational Wimbledon triumph cemented her place as the greatest player of her era.
Making Iga’s win even sweeter is that it marked her 100th career Grand Slam main draw victory. She also earned the first 6-0 opening set in a women’s singles final at Wimbledon since 1983, when Martina Navratilova defeated Andrea Jaeger 6-0, 6-3. (I hope I’m not too obvious that Iga is my favorite WTA player.)
The 25-year-old has been in a slump, however, with her last trophy being a WTA 500 title in Seoul in September 2025. She also had an earlier-than-expected exit at the French Open, her favorite surface (clay), where she previously won an impressive four Slams (2020, 2022, 2023, and 2024).
Over at the ladies’ doubles, last year’s No. 8 seeds Elise Mertens and Veronika Kudermetova defeated No. 4 seeds Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko. The win marked Mertens’ fifth Grand Slam doubles title and Kudermetova’s first.
Though I won’t be writing about the gentlemen’s side of the tournament, it’s worth mentioning that last year’s winner was Jannik Sinner, who defeated two-time defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in the final. Alcaraz, perhaps the most exciting men’s player of his generation, has withdrawn from this year’s Wimbledon because of a wrist injury. The legendary Novak Djokovic is also on the prowl for his 25th Grand Slam title.
Related story: Meet Alex Eala: Filipina tennis prodigy smashing barriers
Related story: These young Filipinos just made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia 2026 list
Top contenders
This year’s tournament features no shortage of talent and compelling storylines. The biggest story, of course, is Serena Williams’ return to Wimbledon for the first time since 2022, competing in both singles and doubles after receiving a wild card into the singles draw. The undisputed GOAT of the game lifted the Venus Rosewater Dish an astounding seven times (2002, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2016).
Apart from defending champ Iga, former Wimbledon champions Elena Rybakina (2022) and Barbora Krejčíková (2024) are among this year’s contenders. Despite having a forgettable clay and grass season, current world no. 1 Aryna Sabalenka shouldn’t be brushed aside. The 28-year-old Belarusian is still regrouping after two of her last four matches have ended with a 6-0 loss in the deciding set, but she is always a threat, whatever the surface is.
19-year-old Mirra Andreeva is also a Wimbledon favorite. Fresh off a win at the French Open, the Russian generational talent’s first Slam, Andreeva’s powerful serve and flexibility make her a top contender on grass.
Other names to look out for are the rest of the top 10 seeds, including Jessica Pegula, Amanda Anisimova, Coco Gauff, Elina Svitolina, Linda Noskova (who beat Alex Eala in the Berlin Open semis), and Karolina Muchova. There’s also Wimbledon finalist Jasmine Paolini, Olympic gold medalist Belinda Bencic, Marta Kostyuk, who had a remarkable clay season, 18-year-old Iva Jovic, who’s having a great year so far, and Naomi Osaka, who was a finalist at the Bad Homburg Open, her first grass-court final, withdrawing in the second set, however, due to a foot injury. Muchova went on to become the champion.
Photo from AP
Photo from Imagn Images
One of the players I’m looking forward to the most (and a new favorite) is Maja Chwalińska. Chwalińska had a fairy-tale Roland-Garros run, reaching the finals as the first qualifier to achieve the feat at the event. Aside from an astronomical rise in rankings from no. 114 to no. 21, she earned a Ladies’ singles wildcard for Wimbledon.
You can see complete list of Wimbledon 2026 seeds here.
Related story: Meet Alex Eala: Filipina tennis prodigy smashing barriers
Related story: Here’s the story behind Rafa Nadal receiving the Olympic torch from Zinedine Zidane in Paris
Of course, there is Alex
Filipinos have so much to be excited about in this year’s Wimbledon, with our tennis sensation Alexandra “Alex” Eala clinching the #29 seed, the first time for the 21-year-old leftie to be seeded at a Grand Slam tournament. She made her Wimbledon debut last year, where she had an early exit after losing to Krejčíková in the first round.
There’s more optimism this time around as Alex comes from a successful grass-court season, posting a 9-2 record that included a title at the Birmingham Open and a deep run at the Berlin Open, defeating back-to-back top-10 opponents Rybakina and Svitolina on the way to a semifinal finish.
For this year’s Wimbledon, Alex belongs in Iga’s section of the draw, where she could face Serena, Iga (whom she beat at last year’s Miami Open), Paolini, and Clara Tauson, among other formidable players.
An all-white parade
As the oldest of the four tennis Grand Slam tournaments, Wimbledon naturally keeps to a set of defining traditions. There is the custom of calling the men’s and women’s competitions “gentlemen’s” and “ladies’,” respectively. There’s also the Centre Court’s Royal Box, the section with the most coveted seats, which are available only by invitation.
And as mentioned earlier, there is an all-white dress code for all participants. Per Britannica, when the code was written in the 1880s, “sweat stains were considered so improper and unsightly that it was decided that white should be worn to minimize their visibility, as sweat is more apparent on colorful clothing.”
Since then, “tennis whites” were considered the standard for well-to-do tennis players, who were pretty much everyone who played in the first Wimbledon tournaments. Even socks, wristbands, shoes, and visible undergarments are tightly regulated, with only tiny colored trims allowed.
While the rigid dress code may seem limiting, for many fans, it only adds to Wimbledon’s old-school charm and prestige. It also brings out the creativity of brands and designers who have collaborations with players.
For this year’s competition, the collab between Miu Miu and New Balance, created for Coco Gauff, has been revealed. The kit pairs a stretch-jersey pleated skirt with an embroidered logo and a minimalist sleeveless top with a crossed-back neckline and delicate scalloped trims, finished off with New Balance x Miu Miu 530 SL dégradé leather sneakers. Every piece in the kit shows the joint navy-and-red logo.
No talk of Wimbledon fashion is complete without mention of tennis style icon Naomi Osaka. Fans are already looking forward to what she will wear for her dramatic on-court entrance, of which she is known (and oftentimes bashed online).
Nike has already launched her kit, which stays faithful to Wimbledon’s dress code while also honoring Naomi’s Japanese heritage. It draws inspiration from Kirigami, the traditional Japanese art of paper cutting, and features custom woven pleats, a rounded hem, and seven 3D flowers. Nearly every size of the four-time Grand Slam champion’s design sold out within hours of the drop, proof of her enduring off-court influence.
Related story: Naomi Osaka brings Harajuku fashion to US Open, dominates first round
