Fourteen days on the grass at the All England Club, Monday 28 June to Sunday 11 July 2027. The Public Ballot is one route in; a debenture is the only ticket that can be resold.
The All England Croquet Club was founded in July 1868 and added lawn tennis eight years later, a game devised by Walter Clopton Wingfield as an outdoor version of real tennis. The club ran its first Championships on 9 July 1877, a gentlemen’s singles and nothing else, with twenty-two men paying a guinea each to enter; the ladies followed in 1884. It moved from Worple Road to Church Road in 1922 and has never left, and its relationship with Slazenger, which has supplied the balls since 1902, is the longest unbroken sponsorship in sport.
Grass is the whole argument. Wimbledon is the only one of the four majors still played on it, which makes it the only fortnight in the year when the sport is contested on the surface it was invented for, on a court that changes under the players as the tournament wears it out. The rules that follow from that are the ones the club is known for: whites, no advertising on court, and a queue that admits people on the day.
The 2027 Championships run from Monday 28 June to Sunday 11 July, a hundred and fifty years after the first. Tickets come by public ballot, by the queue, or by debenture, which is the only Championships ticket that can lawfully be resold. The queue is the part no other major has kept.