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The Queen’s Club Championships were first played in 1889, which makes the event one of the oldest tennis tournaments anywhere in the world. It has been staged at the same West Kensington venue throughout, and it has carried a series of sponsor names over the decades — it has been known as the HSBC Championships since 2025.
Its identity has always been tied to the grass season. The British grass-court swing is extremely short, and Queen’s occupies the position immediately before Wimbledon, which has made it the established preparation event for players targeting the Championships. That role, more than its age, is what gives the tournament its status.
The most significant recent change came in 2025, when women’s professional tennis returned to the Queen’s Club after an absence of more than half a century. The 2025 staging was the 122nd edition of the men’s event and the 82nd of the women’s, the latter returning following a 52-year gap.
The two tournaments run across consecutive weeks rather than simultaneously. The women’s event, a WTA 500, occupies the first week of the grass-court season, with the men’s ATP 500 following the week after. That sequencing gives both fields a clear run at Wimbledon preparation and effectively doubles the tournament’s footprint in the calendar.
Queen’s has an unusually strong association with British tennis, and one player dominates its modern record. Andy Murray won a record five singles titles at the club, in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016, and took a sixth championship overall with a doubles title in 2019. His 2016 win made him the first player to reach five, breaking a tie with an elite group that included Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt, Boris Becker and John McEnroe.
Murray was also perfect in finals at the venue, winning all five and coming from a set down in three of them. That record is a large part of why Queen’s occupies the place it does in British sporting affection — for a decade it was the tournament where a home player was genuinely expected to win, which is rare in tennis.
The Queen’s Club is a private members’ club in West Kensington, and its character is very different from a purpose-built tournament site. The grounds are compact, the main court is intimate by professional standards, and spectators are close to the play. For many followers that proximity is the entire appeal — it is one of the few places to watch top-ranked players at close quarters.
The trade-off is capacity. Queen’s simply cannot absorb the crowds that a Grand Slam site handles, which keeps demand high relative to the number of tickets available. It also means the site fills quickly on finals weekend, and ground passes behave very differently from show-court tickets.
Queen’s exists in Wimbledon’s orbit, and understanding the relationship helps in planning. The grass season in Britain lasts only a few weeks, so players have a narrow window to adjust from clay. Queen’s is where much of that adjustment happens, which is why the entry list is typically stronger than a 500-level tournament would otherwise attract.
If it is the Championships themselves you are planning for, the Wimbledon dates, tickets and stadium guide is the starting point, with queue tips for the ballot-and-queue system, the Centre Court seating guide for show-court planning, and the Wimbledon transport guide for routes to the grounds.
The British grass-court season is remarkably short — a matter of weeks between the end of the clay swing and the start of Wimbledon. Grass rewards a different game from clay: the bounce is lower and faster, points are shorter, and footwork and serve become disproportionately important. Players therefore have very little time to adapt between two surfaces that demand almost opposite skills.
That compression is what gives Queen’s its significance. With so few grass tournaments available, the entry list is consistently stronger than the 500-level classification would normally produce, because the players targeting Wimbledon have nowhere else to prepare. For spectators it means watching genuine contenders rather than a weakened field.
Queen’s operates on a much smaller scale than Wimbledon, so tickets are correspondingly scarcer per session. Demand is concentrated on the later rounds, and the finals weekend of each event is the hardest to access. Early-round days offer far better value and, because the site is compact, a realistic chance of watching leading players on outside courts.
The West Kensington location is well served by Underground and rail, and the surrounding area is residential with the parking restrictions that implies, so public transport is the sensible option. For tennis elsewhere in the city outside the grass season, London’s tennis courts covers the public and club options.