Carlos Alcaraz Withdraws From Wimbledon 2026 Due to Wrist Injury, Sinner to Defend Title

Carlos Alcaraz will not be at Wimbledon this year, and the announcement that came through on Tuesday confirmed what many in the tennisworld had feared since the 23-year-old first picked up the wrist injury that has now cost him four consecutive tournaments and two Grand Slam appearances in the same season.

Alcaraz announced his withdrawal from both the Queen's Club Championships and Wimbledon on social media, saying his recovery was going well and he was feeling much better but that he was still not ready to compete, and that he had to withdraw from the entire grass court swing as a result.

The injury that caused all of this is tenosynovitis which in plain language means an inflammation around the tendon sheath of the wrist and it has proven stubborn enough to rule Alcaraz out of the Madrid Open, the Italian Open, the French Open, and now the entire grass court swing, making this the first time since 2020 that he has missed two Grand Slam tournaments in the same calendar year.

The Australian Open back in January was the last time anyone saw Alcaraz compete, and he left Melbourne with a Career Grand Slam completed and a 22-3 win-loss record on the season, which makes the timing of the injury feel particularly cruel given how well things had been going. Sinner now walks into Wimbledon as the defending champion and the clear favourite to win the whole thing with Alcaraz missing, and the rest of the draw which still includes strong contenders faces the task of beating a player who has been the most consistent man in tennis over the past twelve months.

The best-case scenario for Alcaraz at this point is getting fit in time for the US Open, which would give him a chance to salvage something from a season that started as well as any in his career before the wrist problem derailed it entirely.

Sportscape feels that Wimbledon without Alcaraz is a lesser tournament, and that is not being dramatic about it the rivalry between him and Sinner on grass had been building into something that the sport genuinely needed after years of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic dominating the conversation, and losing that head-to-head for a full year because of a tendon injury is the kind of thing that reminds everyone following tennis how quickly circumstances can change even for the most dominant players in the game.