Padel Is Having a Moment: Why the World's Fastest-Growing Racket Sport Is Taking Off

A modified squash court in 1968 Acapulco has become a 25-million-player global sport in under a decade of real growth — and it's still accelerating.

By Miles Ashworth · 28 Aug 2026 · 2 min read · United Kingdom edition

PatoParadiso, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Padel was invented by accident in 1968, when Enrique Corcuera modified a squash court at his home in Acapulco, Mexico, adding platform-tennis elements because he didn't have room for a full tennis court. The result stuck: a 10x20m enclosed court walled in glass and brick, played in doubles, with an underarm serve and tennis-style scoring. The International Padel Federation governs the sport globally, and its Premier Padel tour — backed by Qatar Sports Investments since 2022 — absorbed its rival, the World Padel Tour, in 2024, ending years of a split professional circuit.

The growth numbers explain why it's suddenly everywhere. More than 25 million people were playing padel across over 90 countries as of 2023. Spain alone has around 5 million players and more than 20,000 courts. The United States is the more dramatic story: from roughly 180 courts in 2022 to over 1,000 courts and 220-plus clubs by January 2026 — a fivefold jump in under four years.

Part of the pull is who's playing it. Former WTA professionals Roberta Vinci and Lara Arruabarrena have moved into padel full-time, and Elina Svitolina co-founded a padel club in Kyiv. The appeal is structural as much as social: the enclosed court lets the ball stay in play off the walls, rallies run longer than a typical tennis point, and the smaller court and underarm serve make it far more approachable for a beginner than tennis ever was.

None of that guarantees padel keeps compounding at the same rate — a sport can only build courts as fast as it can find land and investment, and the US expansion is still small in absolute terms next to tennis or pickleball. But the trajectory from a modified squash court in 1968 to a unified global tour with 25 million players is, by any measure, one of the fastest a racket sport has grown from a standing start.