Serena, Venus Get Another Run at US Open Women’s Doubles Event

NEW YORK: Serena and Venus Williams are going back into a Grand Slam doubles draw together, 27 years after they first became US Open champions as a team.

The Williams sisters have received a wildcard into the 2026 US Open women’s doubles tournament, giving New York another chapter in a partnership that has produced 14 Grand Slam titles, three Olympic gold medals and some of the most influential doubles tennis of the modern era.

The USTA confirmed the wildcard on Wednesday, adding Serena and Venus to a women’s doubles field that begins competition on September 3. Their opening match will be played on September 3 or 4, while the final is scheduled for September 11 at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

The announcement comes only days after Serena returned to the US Open alongside Carlos Alcaraz in mixed doubles, winning one match before Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli eliminated them in the quarterfinals. Venus, meanwhile, is already preparing for another singles appearance after receiving a main-draw wildcard at age 46.

Now the sisters get the reunion New York has not seen since 2022.

There is plenty of history attached to the decision, but the 2026 version of Serena and Venus is also a genuine competitive story. They reunited in Cincinnati earlier this month, took the opening set against Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns and pushed the match all the way to a deciding tiebreak before losing 2-6, 6-1, 10-8.

For two players aged 44 and 46, competing against opponents who have spent the season playing regular tour tennis, that match offered enough evidence to make their US Open wildcard more than a ceremonial invitation.

Serena and Venus Williams at the 2026 US Open: Key Details

Detail	Information
Players	Serena Williams and Venus Williams
Entry	Women’s doubles wildcard
Serena’s age	44
Venus’ age	46
Grand Slam doubles titles together	14
US Open doubles titles	1999 and 2009
Olympic doubles gold medals	3
Last major together	2022 US Open
Most recent tournament together	2026 Cincinnati Open
US Open doubles first round	September 3 or 4
Women’s doubles final	September 11, Arthur Ashe Stadium

TL;DR

• Serena and Venus Williams have received a wildcard for the 2026 US Open women’s doubles draw.
• They will play together at a Grand Slam for the first time since the 2022 US Open.
• The sisters won the US Open doubles championship in 1999 and 2009.
• They have won 14 Grand Slam women’s doubles titles together.
• They are unbeaten in 14 Grand Slam doubles finals.
• Serena and Venus also won Olympic doubles gold medals in 2000, 2008 and 2012.
• They reunited at the Cincinnati Open earlier this month for their first match together in nearly four years.
• Serena has already competed at the 2026 US Open in mixed doubles with Carlos Alcaraz.
• Venus also has a wildcard into the 2026 US Open singles draw.
• The women’s doubles competition begins September 3, with the final scheduled for September 11.

Twenty-Seven Years After Their First US Open Doubles Title, They Are Back

The number that gives this wildcard its historical scale is 27.

Serena and Venus won their first US Open women’s doubles championship together in 1999.

Serena was 17 when that tournament began. Venus was 19.

The sisters were still near the beginning of careers that would eventually reshape women’s tennis through power, athleticism, serving, movement, longevity and an ability to turn major tournaments into global sporting events.

They returned to win the New York doubles title again in 2009.

Now, in 2026, they are entering the same championship as a 44-year-old and a 46-year-old.

The official US Open announcement confirms that their two Flushing Meadows doubles titles came in 1999 and 2009, correcting an erroneous date that appeared in some early coverage of Wednesday’s wildcard announcement.

The return creates an unusually long competitive bridge between two eras of the sport.

Players in the current doubles field were not born when Serena and Venus first lifted the trophy together in New York.

The sisters are still preparing to stand across the net from them.

The Williams Sisters Built One of Tennis’ Greatest Doubles Records

Serena and Venus are remembered primarily as two of the greatest singles players in tennis history, which can occasionally obscure how exceptional they were as a doubles team.

The numbers leave very little room for debate.

Grand Slam	Williams Sisters Doubles Titles
Australian Open	2001, 2003, 2009, 2010
Roland Garros	1999, 2010
Wimbledon	2000, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2016
US Open	1999, 2009
Total	14

They have won every Grand Slam tournament at least twice.

Even more strikingly, they are 14-0 in Grand Slam women’s doubles finals.

When Serena and Venus reached the championship match together at a major, they always won it.

The WTA’s official review of their doubles career also credits them with 22 doubles titles overall and places their 14 majors among the greatest team records of the Open Era.

Their last major title together came at Wimbledon in 2016.

That remains their most recent Grand Slam final as a partnership.

Three Olympic Gold Medals Add Another Layer to Their Partnership

The Grand Slam record tells only part of the story.

Serena and Venus also won Olympic women’s doubles gold together three times.

They were champions at Sydney 2000, Beijing 2008 and London 2012.

That means the partnership succeeded across hard courts and grass, at majors and at the Olympics, across more than a decade of international tennis.

They also jointly reached world No. 1 in doubles in 2010.

The Williams sisters therefore return to New York with the credentials of an established all-time doubles team rather than two singles legends being paired together because their names generate attention.

That difference is important when assessing the wildcard.

Cincinnati Finally Gave Serena and Venus Their Reunion

The sisters had already tried to make this reunion happen earlier in the summer.

Wimbledon gave them a doubles wildcard in June, setting up what was supposed to be their first tournament together since the 2022 US Open.

Serena’s body changed those plans.

She injured her knee during her three-set Wimbledon singles defeat to Maya Joint and subsequently withdrew from doubles before she and Venus could play their opening match.

The Sports Encounter followed the Williams reunion story throughout the grass-court season, when Serena’s comeback had already made another partnership with Venus one of Wimbledon’s biggest potential attractions.

The reunion eventually happened in Ohio.

Serena and Venus received another wildcard for the Cincinnati Open and stepped onto court together on August 17.

Our Cincinnati Open report covered their first competitive doubles match together since 2022, where they faced Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns.

The Americans won the first set 6-2.

Kostyuk and Stearns responded 6-1 in the second.

The deciding match tiebreak became much tighter than it initially appeared. Serena and Venus fell 6-0 behind before fighting back into contention, eventually losing 10-8.

The result was a defeat.

The performance gave them useful evidence before New York.

Cincinnati Showed Why the US Open Wildcard Has Competitive Logic

No responsible analysis should pretend that Serena and Venus are entering the US Open as the same physical force that dominated doubles at their peak.

Age changes movement, recovery, reaction time and the ability to sustain high-intensity tennis over multiple rounds.

The modern doubles game also contains specialists who play together throughout the season and understand positioning, return patterns and net movement at a level that can punish even small moments of hesitation.

Yet Cincinnati showed the Williams sisters can still create uncomfortable tennis.

Their serves remain dangerous.

Their return positions put immediate pressure on opponents.

Both understand doubles geometry instinctively after decades of competing together.

They can also shorten points, which becomes increasingly important as physical endurance becomes a larger consideration.

Taking a current tour-level team to a 10-8 match tiebreak after nearly four years without playing together is hardly evidence that Serena and Venus will win the US Open.

It is enough evidence to make their presence competitively credible.

Serena Has Already Shown New York This Comeback Is Real

Serena arrives in women’s doubles having already completed one US Open comeback this week.

She partnered defending men’s singles champion Carlos Alcaraz in the redesigned mixed doubles championship at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

The pairing defeated Erin Routliffe and Lloyd Glasspool 5-3, 4-1 in the opening round before losing 5-4(4), 4-1 to Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli in the quarterfinals.

The Sports Encounter’s report on Serena’s US Open return highlighted one moment in particular: a 120 mph serve that immediately reminded the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd how much power remains in her game.

That mixed doubles run mattered because Serena had not played competitively at Flushing Meadows since 2022.

She returned four years later and won a match.

Now she gets another New York opportunity with the partner who knows her game better than anyone.

Serena’s 2026 Return Has Developed Faster Than Anyone Expected

When Serena stepped away from tennis after the 2022 US Open, the occasion felt like an ending.

Her return began almost four years later at Queen’s Club in June.

She partnered Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko and immediately won her first professional match back, defeating Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Erin Routliffe 7-6(2), 6-2.

Mboko’s knee injury ended their tournament before the next doubles match.

Serena then played in Berlin, returned to singles at Wimbledon and later reunited with Venus in Cincinnati.

Her Wimbledon singles wildcard turned the comeback into a much larger competitive experiment, because singles demanded movement and physical coverage that doubles could not fully test.

She lost to Maya Joint in three sets and hurt her knee during the match, but the appearance made clear that Serena had not returned simply for exhibitions.

New York has now continued that pattern.

Venus Arrives With Her Own US Open Story

Serena’s return naturally attracts enormous attention, but Venus has been the more continuously active of the two sisters.

The 46-year-old has competed selectively throughout 2026 and has also received a wildcard into the US Open singles championship.

Our analysis of Venus’ singles wildcard examined the difficult balance between her extraordinary history at Flushing Meadows and the competitive reality of facing modern players more than two decades younger.

Doubles presents a different calculation.

Venus does not have to cover the entire court.

Her first serve can create quick points.

Her reach remains useful around the net.

And she demonstrated only last year that she can still make a Grand Slam doubles run.

Venus Reached the US Open Doubles Quarterfinals Last Year

Venus partnered Canada’s Leylah Fernandez at the 2025 US Open after receiving a wildcard only days before the doubles draw began.

The pairing quickly became one of the tournament’s most popular teams.

They defeated seeded opponents and reached the quarterfinals before their run ended.

The official US Open report from last year noted that it was Venus’ first Flushing Meadows doubles quarterfinal since 2014.

That run matters now because it provides recent evidence of Venus competing successfully in this exact tournament format.

She is returning with a partner whose résumé and familiarity are considerably greater than any temporary pairing could offer.

New York Has Seen Almost Every Version of the Williams Sisters

The US Open occupies a unique place in the Williams family story.

Venus reached the singles final on her tournament debut in 1997.

Serena won her first Grand Slam singles championship there in 1999.

Venus won consecutive singles titles in 2000 and 2001.

Serena eventually collected six US Open singles crowns.

The sisters contested two singles finals against each other in New York, with Venus winning in 2001 and Serena responding in 2002.

They won doubles together.

Serena appeared to finish her career there in 2022.

Four years later, they are both back.

That is why the 2026 tournament increasingly feels like an unusual collision between tennis history and the present tour.

The broader field remains dominated by current champions, rising players and contenders with far stronger rankings, a dynamic explored in The Sports Encounter’s complete US Open 2026 preview.

The Williams sisters add something that rankings cannot create.

Continuity.

The Wildcard Does Not Guarantee an Easy Draw

The US Open invitation gives Serena and Venus access to the tournament.

It does not protect them once competition starts.

Doubles specialists are especially dangerous in major tournaments because established partnerships understand how to expose teams that rely too heavily on individual brilliance.

Returns arrive quickly.

Net exchanges can turn in fractions of a second.

Second serves are attacked.

Positioning mistakes are punished immediately.

The Williams sisters will therefore need to establish clean service patterns and avoid allowing opponents to drag them into repeated long exchanges.

Their first-round draw will matter significantly.

A specialist seeded partnership could make the opening match difficult immediately. A less established team could provide more time for Serena and Venus to restore the instincts that Cincinnati only began rebuilding.

The 2026 US Open Has Made Doubles a Major Part of Its Story

Doubles has already occupied an unusually prominent position at this year’s tournament.

The redesigned mixed doubles championship brought leading singles stars into Arthur Ashe Stadium during Fan Week and produced some of the tournament’s first major upsets.

Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka entered as one of the biggest celebrity pairings in the field, while Serena’s partnership with Alcaraz created another major attraction.

The results quickly reminded everyone that doubles chemistry can matter more than individual singles ranking.

Specialists and established teams repeatedly disrupted the headline partnerships.

The Williams sisters offer something different because their fame and doubles pedigree exist together.

They are global stars who also happen to own 14 major doubles titles.

Could Serena and Venus Actually Make Another Deep Run?

The answer depends heavily on what standard we use.

Expecting a championship would ignore the physical reality of their ages and the quality of the modern doubles field.

Dismissing them as a nostalgia act would ignore their history, their Cincinnati performance and Venus’ run in New York last year.

The reasonable expectation lies somewhere between those extremes.

A first-round victory would immediately make the partnership one of the major stories of the doubles tournament.

Two wins would place them close to the business end of the draw and force opponents to deal with increasingly intense crowd support.

A quarterfinal or semifinal appearance would become one of the most remarkable doubles achievements of the season given their ages.

The title remains improbable.

With Serena and Venus, improbable has never meant irrelevant.

The Crowd Could Become Part of the Match

US Open doubles is normally played on courts where atmosphere can vary considerably depending on the matchup.

Any Serena and Venus match will be different.

Cincinnati already demonstrated their drawing power.

New York will amplify it.

The sisters will enter matches with spectators carrying decades of memory into the stands, and opponents will have to manage an environment in which routine points can generate major reactions.

Crowds cannot compensate for missed returns or slow movement.

They can influence momentum.

The Williams sisters understand that relationship better than almost anyone who has played at Flushing Meadows.

Twenty-Seven Years Is the Story, but Competition Is Why This Matters

The easiest way to market the wildcard is through nostalgia.

Serena and Venus won together in 1999.

They are back in 2026.

That alone produces a remarkable image.

The more interesting question begins once the match starts.

How much of their old doubles understanding still exists?

Can Serena’s serve create enough free points?

Can Venus continue the doubles form she showed in New York last year?

Can they move efficiently enough to survive against younger specialist teams?

And if the first match becomes close, can decades of experience still become an advantage rather than simply part of the storyline?

Those questions turn the wildcard into sport rather than ceremony.

TSE Analysis: The US Open Has Given History a Competitive Test

There will always be arguments about Grand Slam wildcards.

Every place given to an established star is a place unavailable to another player who may be younger, higher ranked or trying to break into the sport’s biggest tournaments.

The Williams sisters present a particularly strong case because their value is supported by more than reputation.

They are 14-time Grand Slam doubles champions.

They have never lost a major doubles final.

They won three Olympic gold medals together.

Venus reached this tournament’s doubles quarterfinals last year.

Serena has already won a match at this US Open after returning from nearly four years away.

And Cincinnati showed that the sisters can still make a current doubles team work for every point.

The 2026 wildcard therefore does something a good wildcard should do.

It places a compelling player or team into the draw and then leaves the rest to competition.

No trophy is being presented for what Serena and Venus achieved in 1999.

No opponent will stand aside because they changed tennis.

They have been given a place in the bracket.

Twenty-seven years after winning their first US Open doubles title, they have to earn everything that comes next.

For Serena and Venus Williams, that may be the most fitting way New York could welcome them back.

Follow The Sports Encounter Tennis Hub for US Open 2026 match reports, player stories, results, analysis and breaking news throughout the tournament.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Serena and Venus Williams playing doubles at the 2026 US Open?

Yes. Serena and Venus Williams have received a wildcard into the 2026 US Open women’s doubles main draw.

When will Serena and Venus Williams play?

Their first-round match will be scheduled for either September 3 or September 4, 2026.

When is the US Open women’s doubles final?

The women’s doubles final is scheduled for September 11 at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

How many US Open doubles titles have Serena and Venus won together?

They have won two US Open women’s doubles championships, in 1999 and 2009.

Did Serena and Venus win the US Open doubles title in 2019?

No. Their US Open doubles titles came in 1999 and 2009. The official US Open record confirms both years.

How many Grand Slam doubles titles have the Williams sisters won?

Serena and Venus have won 14 Grand Slam women’s doubles titles together.

Have Serena and Venus ever lost a Grand Slam doubles final?

No. They have a perfect 14-0 record in Grand Slam women’s doubles finals.

How many Olympic doubles gold medals did Serena and Venus win?

They won three Olympic women’s doubles gold medals together, at Sydney 2000, Beijing 2008 and London 2012.

When did Serena and Venus last play a Grand Slam together?

Their previous Grand Slam doubles appearance together came at the 2022 US Open.

When did Serena and Venus last play doubles together?

They reunited at the Cincinnati Open in August 2026, losing a close first-round match to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns.

Why did Serena and Venus not play Wimbledon doubles together in 2026?

They received a Wimbledon doubles wildcard but withdrew before their opening match after Serena suffered a knee injury during her singles match against Maya Joint.

Is Serena Williams playing singles at the 2026 US Open?

The confirmed Serena Williams entries discussed here are mixed doubles and women’s doubles. She reached the mixed doubles quarterfinals with Carlos Alcaraz before receiving the women’s doubles wildcard with Venus.

Is Venus Williams playing singles at the 2026 US Open?

Yes. Venus has also received a wildcard into the women’s singles main draw.

How far did Venus Williams go in US Open doubles last year?

Venus reached the 2025 US Open women’s doubles quarterfinals with Leylah Fernandez.