For a July midday session at No. 2 Court, the sun sits 57° up in the south-east as play begins, so shade means the covered stands, a closed retractable roof, or waiting for the sun to drop behind the far stand. Sunset is 9:11 PM local, so an evening session gets real shade as the sun drops. By 7:05 PM the sun is only 17° up in the west, 126 minutes from setting.
Check the sun for YOUR match →We know this court's orientation and roof, but not a verified seat-by-seat map, so we won't colour individual sections. What's above is exact: the sun's astronomical position for the court's coordinates and timezone. The interactive page adds the live sun compass, sunset against session time, and the hour-by-hour forecast.
Sun & sunset check for No. 2 Court · Satellite shadow view
There is no roof coming to save you on No. 2 Court. Wimbledon's third-largest show court seats 4,000 under open London sky, and when the Championships catch a fine spell, this is where committed fans sit in the sun for hours watching seeded players up close. The good news is that the court's own stands do a respectable job of shading it. You just need to know the schedule.
No. 2 Court sits on the All England Club's near north-south grid, the standard tennis alignment that keeps a rising or setting sun out of the servers' eyes. Its high east and west stands face each other across the sidelines, and through the day they take turns shading the far side of the court: as the sun tracks over from the southeast toward the west, each tall stand throws its shadow onto the seats opposite. The upshot is that shade on No. 2 Court is a moving target that generally improves as the day goes on.
Midday is the low point. With the sun 57 degrees high in the south-southeast at noon during a London high summer, the light clears the stands and spreads across most of the seating, an 11 AM or midday start means direct sun for the bulk of the crowd, wherever they sit. By mid-to-late afternoon the tall stands have pulled a good portion of the bowl into shadow, and the court becomes a much more forgiving place to sit.
Wimbledon's daylight runs remarkably late, sunset in high summer comes around 9:11 PM, and the sun is still 17 degrees up at 7 PM, hanging in the west-northwest. Matches that run long can keep west-facing seats in low, direct light well past the point where the rest of No. 2 Court has cooled off. It is gentle light by then, more squint than sunburn, but worth knowing if you are sensitive to glare during a tight fourth set.
London's climate keeps the stakes lower than at the hard-court majors; most days here are mild, and a sunny afternoon on No. 2 Court is usually a pleasure rather than an endurance test. On the occasional hot day of the fortnight, the standard kit applies, hat, sunscreen, water, because 4,000 seats and no roof means the only shelter on No. 2 Court is the shadow of the stands, delivered strictly on the stands' own timetable rather than yours.
If you can choose when to be on No. 2 Court, choose later. The same crowd that bakes at noon is comfortably shaded by late afternoon, the atmosphere loses nothing in the process, and you will still have hours of daylight tennis ahead of you thanks to the long London evening. For a specific date and hour, the interactive shade map shows exactly where the shadow line will sit, which beats guessing from the grounds map while the queue moves.
Upcoming events at No. 2 Court are ticketed on TixBit.