For the 2025 Championships, the All England Lawn Tennis Club removed human line judges and used electronic line calling (ELC) for every match, the first time in the tournament’s 148-year history that no line judges stood on court. The change brought Wimbledon in line with the ATP and WTA Tours, the Australian Open, and the US Open, all of which had already adopted automated line calling.
The system uses an array of cameras around each court to track the ball and determine whether it lands in or out, generating an automated voice call in place of a human judge. AELTC leadership framed the move as a way to deliver maximum accuracy and to give players the same officiating conditions they experience at most other tour events. Roland-Garros remained the lone Grand Slam still using human line judges.
The switch did not eliminate controversy. During the 2025 event a technical incident left part of the system inadvertently deactivated for several points, and organizers afterward removed the operators’ ability to manually turn off ball tracking. The episode underlined a recurring theme in sports automation: replacing human officials shifts responsibility onto the reliability and oversight of the software, not away from error entirely.