Wimbledon was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The All England Club announced the cancellation on 1 April 2020, ending plans for a tournament scheduled from 29 June to 12 July. The decision followed the rapid spread of COVID-19 and the difficulty of staging a safe event involving players, officials, staff, broadcasters, and thousands of spectators.
The cancellation was historically significant: Wimbledon had not been called off since World War II, when the Championships were absent from 1940 through 1945. The 2020 edition would have been the tournament’s 134th staging. It was not merely postponed; no 2020 Wimbledon tournament was played, and the Championships returned in 2021.
A common mix-up is confusing the canceled 2020 tournament with the 2021 edition, which was held after the pandemic interruption. Novak Djokovic and Simona Halep entered 2020 as the reigning men’s and women’s singles champions from 2019, but neither could defend those titles that year.