Two-time Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova and seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams have been awarded wild cards into next month's BNP Paribas Open, the tournament announced on Wednesday.

Kvitova and Williams are both returning in 2025 from long layoffs: Kvitova, maternity leave, and Wiliams, injury -- and Indian Wells will represent their return to WTA 1000-level tournament action in no less than a year.

After the birth of her first child, son Petr, last July, Kvitova announced two weeks ago that the first tournament of her comeback will be the WTA 250 in Austin later this month. She last played at the 2023 China Open, before announcing her pregnancy on New Year's Day 2024. 

Williams, meanwhile, will take the court for the first time in nearly a year when she returns in Indian Wells at age 44. Following an injury-plagued 30th season on the Hologic WTA Tour in 2023, Williams received a wild card to both the BNP Paribas Open and Miami Open last year. She lost in the first round to Nao Hibino and Diana Shnaider, respectively, in her only competitive match action of the 2024 season.

Kvitova is a three-time quarterfinalist in Indian Wells in 12 career appearances, while Williams has reached the semifinals three times in nine trips to the California desert, though she did not play the event from 2002-16. 

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The full direct acceptance list for the third WTA 1000 event of the year was released earlier this month, and is made up of the entire Top 20 in the PIF WTA Rankings from the entry deadline of four weeks before the event. It includes World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, five former tournament champions including reigning champion and World No. 2 Iga Swiatek, and Australian Open Madison Keys, who missed the ongoing Middle East swing with a leg injury.

Coming off the heels of back-to-back WTA 1000s in the Middle East, the two-week tournament kicks off the "Sunshine Double," as the WTA and ATP Tours go coast-to-coast from California to the Miami Open to close out the spring hard-court season. Indian Wells is the first combined WTA 1000/ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the season.

Six further main-draw wild cards will be announced in the coming weeks before main-draw play officially begins on March 5.