The most Wimbledon singles titles ever won belongs, on the women’s side, to Martina Navratilova, whose nine championships include a run of six straight (1982-87) that remains the most sustained ownership of one major in the Open Era. The men’s record is Roger Federer’s eight, a summit that suddenly matters again this fortnight, because Novak Djokovic sits one behind at seven, and every Wimbledon he enters is a run at tying the greatest grass-courter of all time.
And those are just the singles numbers. Count every event, singles, doubles, mixed, and Wimbledon’s all-time leaderboard belongs to two women tied at twenty titles apiece: Navratilova and Billie Jean King, a share of history split between the champion who owned the singles court and the one who owned all of them.
The chart below covers the complete records: the men’s and women’s singles leaderboards, the all-events table, the streaks and era notes that shape the lists, and the active chases underway this very weekend. Take a look, then we’ll break it all down.
Contents
Wimbledon’s record book has three numbers at the top. Martina Navratilova’s nine singles titles (1978-1990) stand as the most anyone has ever won here, built around a six-in-a-row streak (1982-87) that remains the longest unbroken reign of the modern game. Roger Federer’s eight (2003-2017), including five straight of his own, is the men’s mark, the one Pete Sampras’ seven once seemed to future-proof and the one Novak Djokovic, sitting on seven, can tie with any Wimbledon he ever wins. And when every event counts, singles, doubles, and mixed, the leaderboard becomes a two-woman monument: Billie Jean King and Navratilova, tied at twenty Wimbledon titles apiece, a summit Navratilova reached by winning the 2003 mixed doubles at age 46, a quarter-century after her first championship, purely to stand beside King’s total.
Reading the lists honestly: eras inside the numbers
Wimbledon’s leaderboards span three tennis worlds, and the fine print matters. Until 1922, the defending champion didn’t play the tournament at all, he waited for a challenger and defended his title in a single match, which is how William Renshaw’s seven titles (1881-89) and Dorothea Lambert Chambers’ seven came at a fraction of the modern workload. The pre-1968 professional ban carved holes in mid-century careers (Rod Laver’s four titles come with five banned prime years attached), the World Wars removed ten championships outright, and even the grass itself changed, the 2001 switch to pure ryegrass slowed the courts, meaning every title since Sampras’ era was won on meaningfully different lawns. The cleanest comparisons live in the Open Era, which is exactly where the Borg, Navratilova, Sampras, Federer, and Djokovic dynasties built the numbers above.
The chases running this weekend
The records are live inventory this fortnight. Djokovic’s pursuit of an eighth title, at an age where each Championships might be the last real attempt, is the men’s draw’s permanent subplot; the defending champions, Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek, are each one title into climbs that history prices at a decade of near-annual dominance. That’s the real lesson of the leaderboard: Wimbledon titles compound slowly and cruelly, Serena Williams, with arguably the greatest career in the sport’s history, finished with seven here, one behind Helen Wills Moody’s 1930s total, and the finals on July 11-12 will hand someone exactly one more brick toward mountains that took Federer fifteen summers and Navratilova thirteen. This page adds the new names Sunday night.
Final Word
Most Wimbledon titles ever: Navratilova’s 9 singles crowns (six of them consecutive) and Federer’s 8 lead the singles lists, with Djokovic one win from a tie; Wills Moody (8), Graf and Serena (7 each), Sampras and Renshaw (7) fill the shelves below; and the all-events summit is shared at 20 by Navratilova and Billie Jean King, tied by a 46-year-old’s mixed doubles title. Read the pre-1922 totals with the challenge-round asterisk, the mid-century ones with the pro-ban asterisk, and this weekend’s finals as what they are: one brick each toward the tallest records in tennis.
The full year-by-year roll is in Wimbledon champions by year, the sport-wide version of this list is in most Grand Slam titles all-time, and the silverware they’re stacking is explained in the Wimbledon trophies.