Serena Williams, Princess of Asturias Award for Sports

American tennis player Serena Williams has been granted the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports, as announced today by the Jury responsible for conferring said Award.

The Jury for the Award –convened by the Princess of Asturias Foundation– was chaired by Teresa Perales Fernández and was made up of Teresa Bernadas Porto, Carlos Carpio Rodríguez, Joaquín Folch-Rusiñol Corachán, Vicente Jiménez Navas, Santiago Nolla Zayas, Jennifer Pareja Lisalde, Edurne Pasabán Lizarribar, Samuel Sánchez González, Sitapha Savané Sagna, Alberto Suárez Laso, Joan Vehils Guasch, Theresa Zabell Lucas and Paloma del Río Cañadas (acting as secretary).

This candidature was put forward by Jaime Montalvo Correa, Vice President of Mutua Madrileña and member of the Jury for the 2025 Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences.

Serena Jameka Williams was born on 26th September 1981 in Saginaw (Michigan, USA) and began playing tennis at the age of five, under the guidance of her coach father and emulating her sister Venus, also a tennis player. A professional since 1995, Serena made her mark in mixed doubles competition in 1998, winning Wimbledon and the US Open with partner Max Mirnyi. A year later, her singles victories at the French Open and the US Open earned her her first WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) title and her first Grand Slam title, respectively. These triumphs, along with several in doubles with her sister, among others, placed her among the top ten tennis players that year. In 2000, she made her debut at the Sydney Games, where she won her first Olympic gold medal in doubles.

Six-time US Open champion and seven-time winner at Wimbledon, Serena Williams has garnered 73 singles titles, 23 doubles, 2 mixed doubles (both Grand Slams) and 4 Olympic gold medals and is considered one of the greatest tennis players in the history of the sport. With her physical and mental fortitude and impeccable technique, she has broken several records in women’s tennis. Among all her titles, she boasts 39 Grand Slam titles, 23 of them in singles, making her the second “Open Era” tennis player (male or female) with the most titles in the four major tournaments, surpassed only by Novak Djokovic. With this figure, when she won her seventh Wimbledon title in 2016, she equalled the record held by Steffi Graf (1999 Prince of Asturias Award for Sports) and then went on to surpass it with 22 titles on winning the 2017 Australian Open. That year in Australia, at 35 years old, she was the oldest tennis player to win an “Open Era” singles Grand Slam. She topped the singles rankings for the first time in 2002, winning tournaments in Scottsdale, Key Biscayne, Rome, Roland Garros and Wimbledon. In the last two of these tournaments, she defeated her sister Venus in the final, also knocking her off the top spot in the world rankings. In 2003, with her victory at the Australian Open, she won four Grand Slam titles in twelve months. After several years away from the top rankings due to various injuries, she won in Australia in 2007 and in doubles in 2008 together with her sister at Wimbledon and the Beijing Games (gold medal), ending 2009 as No. 1 in the rankings. At the next Olympic Games, in London in 2012, she won her first singles gold and her third gold medal in doubles. By closing the year at the top of the WTA rankings in 2013, she established a milestone as the oldest tennis player to hold that spot since 1975 (the year electronic registration was introduced). She demonstrated her supremacy by finishing in that position for the following two years and again, in 2015, winning all the Grand Slam titles in twelve months. In 2016, she set a new record by garnering 308 Grand Slam victories, surpassing Roger Federer’s previous all-time record of 307. However, she lost the US Open semifinal and with it her position at the top of the WTA rankings, which she had held consecutively for 186 weeks, equalling Steffi Graf’s record. She won the Australian Open again in 2017, but shortly afterward stepped back from competition after becoming pregnant. She returned to the courts in 2018 and subsequently announced her definitive retirement in 2022. 

Committed to defending equal opportunities in education and helping victims of violence, she provides resources through several organizations: The Serena Williams Foundation, via which she has built secondary schools in Kenya and Jamaica; The Williams Sisters Fund, which she founded in 2016 with her sister; and the Yetunde Price Resource Center, named after her sister Yetunde, who died in 2003. She also founded Serena Ventures, via which she invests in start-ups, primarily founded by women and persons belonging to minorities. Named six-time world champion by the International Tennis Federation between 2002 and 2015, Serena Williams has been bestowed with the Laureus Sportswoman of the Year Award four times (2003, 2010, 2016 and 2018) and the Laureus Comeback Player of the Year Award (2007), among many other distinctions. She was named UNICEF National Goodwill Ambassador for Education in 2011. 

As stated in the Statutes of the Foundation, the Princess of Asturias Awards are aimed at rewarding “the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanitarian work carried out at an international level by individuals, institutions or groups of individuals or institutions”. In keeping with these principles, the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports is to be granted to “careers which, via the promotion, fostering and advancement of sport and social commitment, have become an example of the benefits that practising sports can bring to people.” 

This year, a total of 30 candidatures comprising 13 different nationalities were put forward for the Sports Award.

This is the fifth of the eight Princess of Asturias Awards to be bestowed in what is now their forty-fifth year. Previously, the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities was granted to South Korean-born German philosopher and essayist Byung-Chul Han, the Princess of Asturias for Literature was conferred on Spanish writer Eduardo Mendoza, the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences went to American sociologist and demographer Douglas Massey, and the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts was bestowed on Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. The corresponding Awards for Concord, Technical and Scientific Research, and International Cooperation shall be announced in the coming weeks (in the preceding order).

As is customary, the presentation of the Princess of Asturias Awards will take place in October in a solemn ceremony presided over by Their Majesties The King and Queen, accompanied by Their Royal Highnesses Leonor, Princess of Asturias, and Infanta Sofía of Spain. Each Princess of Asturias Award comprises a Joan Miró sculpture symbolizing the Award, a diploma, an insignia and a cash prize of fifty thousand euros.