QUALIFYING
Tickets are now on sale!
The most important events on the tennis calendar are the Grand Slam tournaments. And of these, surely the one regarded as the most prestigious is the British Open, commonly known as Wimbledon.
I imagine many tennis lovers would love to visit at least once in their life time.
We are lucky enough to have lived in the area in the past 25 years and have visited Wimbledon every year trying all sorts of ways to secure tickets there.
In this blog series, we will provide a comprehensive guide on how to gets tickets.
Let me start by explaining the qualifying rounds. Don’t underestimate them just because they’re called ‘qualifying’. In Grand Slam singles tournaments, 128 players compete in both the men’s and women’s draws, but only those ranked within the top 100 or so qualify directly for the main draw. 128 players ranked up to around 220th compete in the qualifying rounds for the 16 spots in the main draw (the rest are filled by wildcards awarded by the organisers).
Whether or not a player makes it into the main draw can mean a difference of an entire order of magnitude in prize money (think £10k versus £100k), so the players are all fighting tooth and nail, making for some truly thrilling matches.
What’s more, the tickets are cheap, easy to get, and you can see the players up close, making the matches extremely popular among tennis enthusiasts.
If you’d like to watch Wimbledon but simply can’t get hold of tickets, do try to experience at least the qualifiers.
Dates and Venue:
Dates: The four days immediately preceding the start of the main tournament; for 2026, this will be 22 – 25 June
Venue: Community Sports Centre Roehampton, Bank Lane, London SW15 5JQ. [Click here for map]
How to get there: This location is a little inconvenient to reach without a car.
For example, if travelling by public transport from Oxford Circus in central London, take the Victoria Line to Vauxhall, then change to South Western Railways to Barns. From Barns station, it is about a 25-minute walk. Therefore, if you do not wish to walk that far, we recommend taking a taxi or Uber from Barns station.
* If you are coming by car, there are parking bays on Bank Lane, so you can park there if there is a space available. If there are no spaces, we recommend using the car park at Richmond Park and walking from there.
Ticket On-Sale Date and Price for 2026
On-sale date: 1st June, 2026
Price: £20
Same-day tickets availability: Yes. You can often buy them on the day.
The tournament begins at 11:00 am (BST). Play continues until sunset on the first three days, but as there are fewer matches on the final day, it will finish earlier. However, as the men’s matches on the final day are best-of-five sets (compared to best-of-three sets on the first two days), each match will take longer.
As you can see, you’re really close to the players!
Incidentally, this Community Sports Centre Roehampton is open to the public during the short grass-court season following Wimbledon (until around mid-September). If you become a member of the AELTC (All England Lawn Tennis Club) – lifetime membership used to cost £4 until the year before last, but it went up to £15 last year – anyone can book a court and enjoy playing on natural grass.
As these are the prestigious AELTC courts, you are asked to wear white clothing ‘as much as possible’.
On a slightly different note, our passion for tennis led us to create an app for automatically pairing doubles partners (goodMatches) and a score counter app for the Apple Watch (tapAndScore Tennis). I think they’re really handy (patting myself on the back 😁). Please do give them a try if you’re interested.
You can download them from the App Store by clicking the icons below.
