Wimbledon will avoid the threat of player protests at this year’s tournament after representatives of the world’s leading tennis stars revealed they recognise the significant prize money increase offered by the All England Club.
“Leading players from the ATP and WTA Tours welcome Wimbledon’s 2026 prize money announcement as a genuine and significant step forward – the 20% increase is the largest single-year uplift in the tournament’s history and a meaningful signal of intent,” the player group said in a statement.
“Players want to see Wimbledon continue to thrive and support the investment the tournament makes in the game. The question has never been whether those investments are valuable, but whether the athletes whose performances drive the event’s global success should receive a fair share of its tremendous financial growth. Our goal is not to diminish that success, it is to ensure that its continued growth benefits equitably everyone who contributes to it.”
On Thursday, Wimbledon had announced a prize money purse of £64.2m for this year’s Championships, which begins at the end of this month. The increase represents a £10.7m rise from last year, with the men’s and women’s singles champions receiving £3.6m and singles players defeated in the first round receiving £80,000.
The top tennis players and their representatives have been in dispute with the grand slam tournaments since last year, with the dispute escalating after the French Open’s prize money announcement and the top male and female players initiating a media boycott ahead of the tournament in response. In a subsequent meeting with the All England Club, the players’ representatives had pushed for Wimbledon for this year’s prize money to reflect a 16% revenue share, which would have translated to around £71.2m in prize money.
Despite their reaction to Wimbledon’s prize money, the player group noted that the revenue share of 14.4% for this year’s event is below the 14.9% offered to players in 2015. The relevance of using revenue share to measure prize money has been a point of contention between the two groups, with Debbie Jevans arguing on Thursday that it made “no sense” to do so considering Wimbledon’s status as a non-profit organisation.
The players’ group also noted that the increased prize money does not resolve the other issues they had campaigned for, including contributions to a player welfare fund, a revenue sharing formula and a player council. The latter has been another sticking point. While the All England Club believes initiating a player council would provide them with a platform to discuss these issues, the player group has previously stated that they expect the grand slams to respond formally to the other points before they move towards agreeing a player council.
