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Margaret Court has 24 majors; Serena Williams leads the Open Era with 23
Compare women’s Grand Slam singles title leaders, tournament totals and Open Era records—and see why singles and combined titles differ.
Margaret Court holds the women’s all-time record with 24 Grand Slam singles titles. Serena Williams holds the women’s Open Era record with 23. Both answers are correct: Court’s career crossed the amateur and Open eras, while all of Williams’s majors came in the Open Era. The WTA’s Grand Slam records list the two categories separately.
Here, a title means winning the singles championship at the Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon or US Open—not winning a match, reaching a final or collecting a doubles trophy. Records below are current through October 4, 2026.
Women’s Grand Slam singles title leaders
The table includes every woman with at least 12 major singles titles, combining the amateur and Open eras.
| Player | Australian Open | Roland Garros | Wimbledon | US Open | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Margaret Court | 11 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 24 |
| Serena Williams | 7 | 3 | 7 | 6 | 23 |
| Steffi Graf | 4 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 22 |
| Helen Wills Moody | 0 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 19 |
| Chris Evert | 2 | 7 | 3 | 6 | 18 |
| Martina Navratilova | 3 | 2 | 9 | 4 | 18 |
| Billie Jean King | 1 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 12 |
Source: WTA 2026 Grand Slam records, title-leaders table. Historical editions of the tournaments are included under their present names.
The breakdown adds information that the total alone misses. Evert and Navratilova are tied on 18, but Evert won seven titles at Roland Garros while Navratilova won nine at Wimbledon. Equal career totals do not imply identical tournament strengths.
Why Serena leads the Open Era
The Open Era began in 1968, when amateurs and professionals began competing together in open tournaments. The ATP dates the first such event to April 22, 1968, at Bournemouth. That change in eligibility is the reason record books use an era boundary—not an adjustment for how difficult individual titles were to win. See the ATP’s history of the start of open tennis.
Court won 13 singles majors before the Open Era and 11 during it. Counting only Open Era titles therefore puts Williams first on 23, Graf second on 22, and Evert and Navratilova tied next on 18, according to the WTA’s separate Open Era leaderboard.
Williams’s 23rd major came at the 2017 Australian Open, where she defeated Venus Williams in the final. She subsequently reached four more major finals without adding another singles title, as recorded in her WTA career biography.
Era labels still do not make playing conditions identical. The Australian Open switched from grass to hard courts in 1988: Court’s 11 Australian singles titles were won on grass, while Williams’s seven were won on hard courts. The tournament name is constant; the surface is not. The WTA’s Australian Open history records the switch.
What if doubles titles are included?
That is a different record. Court leads with 64 major titles across singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles: 24 singles, 19 women’s doubles and 21 mixed doubles. Her combined total includes two shared Australian mixed-doubles titles, a counting detail noted by Tennis Australia.
Navratilova holds the women’s Open Era combined record with 59: 18 singles, 31 women’s doubles and 10 mixed doubles, according to her WTA biography.
So a broadcast graphic needs two labels: which disciplines are counted, and which era is covered. Without them, “most Grand Slams” can describe different leaderboards. For the wider comparison of titles, match wins and calendar-year achievements, see our Grand Slam tennis records guide.