For years, a claim has circulated online that used balls from the annual Wimbledon tennis championship are repurposed into homes for mice facing habitat loss.
In mid-January 2026, for example, an X account wrote (archived), in part: "After the Wimbledon tournament each year, some of the 55,000 used tennis balls are upcycled into tiny shelters for harvest mice."
The rumor has repeatedly popped up on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit and X since at least 2023.
In short, while Wimbledon has previously donated some of its tennis balls for conservation groups to use as homes for harvest mice, these donations appear to have been one-offs. For this reason, we have rated this claim as outdated.
The oldest source for the alleged donation appeared to come from a 2001 BBC article, which at the time stated that some of the tournament's 36,000 tennis balls were donated to The Wildlife Trusts — a British federation of wildlife conservation charities — to be recycled as homes for harvest mice. A 2003 BBC article featured a small follow-up note to that story, stating that Wimbledon had donated 350 tennis balls to The Wildlife Trusts two years earlier.
Snopes contacted The Wildlife Trusts and Wimbledon to confirm if the tournament has continued to make such donations and, if so, for details about what is included in them. A spokesperson for The Wildlife Trusts said: "Unfortunately, the tennis ball story is very out of date as we haven't worked with Wimbledon in this way for some time." Similarly, a Wimbledon spokesperson confirmed that the story about harvest mice was an old one.
In 2011, The Guardian newspaper reported that Wimbledon again donated tennis balls to house mice, this time at the request of an aquarium in northern England. The Guardian did not say how many tennis balls were donated at the time.
It was not possible to find more recent articles about the tournament making such donations, although other tennis clubs in the U.K. have reportedly gifted tennis balls for the same purpose.
While not endangered globally, harvest mice are considered "Near Threatened" in the U.K., according to the Mammal Society, a British charity. Harvest mice are Britain's smallest rodent, which means a tennis ball with a hole cut into it can be a place for the mice to rest safe from their predators.
During the tournament, Wimbledon sells its used tennis balls on-site, and the proceeds go to the Wimbledon Foundation, its charity organization. Wimbledon has been selling its used tennis balls for the last several years, according to the tournament's spokesperson.
Wimbledon's website did not include any information on the fate of unused and unsold tennis balls, but Keith Prowse, a sports hospitality company that partners with Wimbledon, said they are donated or recycled in the weeks and months after the tournament finishes. Keith Prowse's website added: "Previously, some of the balls have been donated to the UK Wildlife Trust who cut them up and used them to make homes for harvest mice!"