Serena and Venus Williams have been awarded a doubles wild card for the 2026 Cincinnati Open, marking their first competitive doubles appearance together in nearly four years The Guardian.

A wild card, in tennis, is a tournament entry granted at the organisers' discretion rather than earned through ranking — a way to bring big names or promising locals into the draw. The Cincinnati Open, a hard-court tournament that begins on 11 August 2026, announced its women's wild cards on 3 August.

The sisters have never played doubles in Cincinnati before. Their last competitive outing as a pair came at the 2022 US Open, where they lost to Lucie Hradecka and Linda Noskova. They had also been awarded a wild card for the Wimbledon doubles draw in 2026, but withdrew in July as Serena dealt with a knee injury The Guardian.

The pedigree is enormous. Between them, the Williams sisters have won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles — including six at Wimbledon — and three Olympic gold medals in doubles The Guardian.

Serena, 44, has had a patchy 2026. She received a wild card into the Wimbledon singles draw but fell in the first round to Australian Maya Joint. She is also expected to play mixed doubles at the US Open, which begins on 31 August in New York, with Carlos Alcaraz a possible partner Yahoo Sports.

Venus, 46, received her own singles wild card into Cincinnati alongside Sloane Stephens, Taylor Townsend, Darja Vidmanova and Elvina Kalieva The Guardian. She partnered Caty McNally in Cincinnati as recently as 2025, also via a wild card Cincinnati Open.

For tennis fans, the Cincinnati draw offers a rare chance to see the sisters share a court in a setting they have never graced before. With the US Open starting three weeks later, it also serves as a hard-court tune-up — a chance to sharpen reflexes and timing on the same surface that Flushing Meadows uses.

Whether the knees hold up and the old instincts click back into place is the question. Cincinnati will provide the first answer.