For a July midday session at No. 3 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. 3 Court · Satellite shadow view
Honesty first: No. 3 Court is the show court where you will sit in the sun. With 2,000 seats, no roof, and stands modest enough that they cast little shadow of their own, this corner of the All England Club offers wonderful close-up tennis and very little shelter from a fine London day. If you are picking between show courts on a sunny afternoon of the Championships, that trade should be a conscious one.
The court sits near No. 2 on Wimbledon's standard near north-south alignment, the layout that spares the players a low sun in their eyes at either baseline, but unlike its bigger neighbors, No. 3 Court does not have the tall tiers that generate afternoon shade. Shade at a tennis court comes almost entirely from the structure around it, and here the structure is low. During a midday match in high summer, when the London sun stands 57 degrees above the horizon, the light clears the small stands easily and lands on most of the seating. There is no clever section that escapes it, and no upper tier to retreat into when the court fills up.
The relief arrives late and from one direction. As the sun works around to the west and begins to sink, shade builds from the west side of No. 3 Court through the late afternoon, the west-side seats put their backs to the sun first, and the shadow creeps across from there. Until that happens, assume you are in the light.
Wimbledon's saving grace is its climate. English high summer is mild by Grand Slam standards, and a few hours of sun on No. 3 Court is usually pleasant rather than brutal, this is not the scorched experience of a hard-court major in late August. That said, UV does not care that the air feels nice. The fortnight's classic mistake is sitting through two long matches on an open court without sunscreen because the temperature never felt threatening. A hat and sunscreen cost nothing in comfort and save you the souvenir sunburn.
The other quirk to plan for is daylight. Sunset in London comes around 9:11 PM in high summer, and at 7 PM the sun is still 17 degrees up in the west-northwest. A late match on No. 3 Court plays out in long, low light rather than shade-then-darkness, so seats facing the western sky can be dealing with glare deep into the evening even after the heat of the day is gone.
Come to No. 3 Court for the tennis, not the comfort: pick a west-side seat if you want shade soonest, arrive protected if you are sitting anywhere else before mid-afternoon, and treat a late-afternoon slot as the sweet spot where the crowd, the light, and the temperature all improve together. To see exactly when the shadow reaches a given side on the date you are attending, the interactive shade map has the hour-by-hour picture.
Upcoming events at No. 3 Court are ticketed on TixBit.