What the World Padel Report 2026 means for padel clubs Padel has grown up.

Padel has grown up. The question for clubs has changed.

The FIP World Padel Report 2026, presented in Madrid on 12 October, counts more than 40 million padel players in 191 countries. Somewhere in the world, a new court is installed every 36 minutes.

For anyone running a padel club, the headline is not the growth itself. It is what that growth does to your market: more courts, more clubs, and more choice for every player you already have. The sport has moved from “build it and they will come” to “build it, then keep them coming”.

What the report says

The third edition of the report is built on a survey of 70 national federations. It shows a sport that keeps growing on every continent, and it measures padel’s economic weight for the first time.

• - Players worldwide: 40+ million

• - Playing weekly or every two weeks: about 27 million

• - Share of women: 47%

• - Countries where padel is played: 191

• - Countries with more than 100 courts: 59 (47 a year earlier)

• - Court growth: 20%+ a year, a new court every 36 minutes

• - FIP member federations: 115, of which 15 joined this year

• - Annual spending by the padel industry: €6.84 billion

• - Jobs supported: 235,000+

The geography is shifting too. For the first time, Asia opens more new clubs than Europe: two in every five new clubs worldwide. Spain, Italy and Argentina remain the top three for courts and clubs. Italy alone has 10,375 courts across 3,855 clubs.

How to read it

The report is good news for the sport, but more courts are not the same as fuller courts. Three things are worth reading between the lines.

• - Supply is growing faster than demand. Courts are growing by more than 20% a year. The player count rose from “35+ million” in the 2025 edition to “40+ million” now, roughly 14%. The two editions are not a perfect like-for-like comparison, but the direction is clear: every year, more courts compete for each player.

• - Some markets are already correcting. Playtomic’s own Global Padel Report 2026, made with Strategy& (PwC), puts Sweden, Finland and Chile in a “post-boom adjustment”. In Chile, monthly bookings fell 27% over a 2024 period and more than 80 clubs closed. The Netherlands sits in its “sweet spot” group: strong growth, not yet saturated.

• - The definition of a player matters. FIP counts 40+ million players. Playtomic’s deliberately conservative bottom-up count lands at 19.4 million. Both can be right. The gap is the difference between people who have played and people who play regularly, and the regular player is the one a club’s business runs on.

The takeaway for clubs: the growth phase rewarded whoever opened first. The next phase rewards whoever keeps players longest.

What it means for club owners

When courts grow faster than players, the advantage moves from having courts to knowing your players. Four consequences follow.

• - Regular players are your real asset. The 27 million who play at least every two weeks are the ones who fill your courts. They rarely announce they are leaving; they just book less often, then stop. Spotting that drift early is worth more than any acquisition campaign.

• - A new club nearby is a direct threat to your regulars. With a new court every 36 minutes, most clubs will see a competitor open within reach. Players compare on experience, community and how well they are matched, not only on price.

• - Almost half your potential players are women. At 47%, programming, matchmaking and communication built around one “typical” player miss a large part of the market.

• - Margin sits in the quiet hours. Peak evenings sell themselves. Daytime and late-morning courts are where the next euro of revenue is, and they only fill when the right players get the right offer at the right time.

None of this needs more courts. It needs better use of the information every club already has in its booking system.

Where Cuchilla Connect fits

This is the problem we work on every day. Cuchilla Connect is a CRM and marketing automation platform built only for padel clubs. It does not replace your booking system; it works on top of it, starting with Playtomic.

How it works:

1. - Connect. Your booking data syncs automatically: who plays, when, how often, and how much they spend.

3. - Understand. Players are grouped by behaviour: new players, regulars, VIPs, daytime players, and players who are drifting away.

5. - Act. Automated flows send the right message at the right moment by email and WhatsApp: a welcome after the first booking, a win-back before a regular disappears, a free court at 11:00 to the players who actually play then.

The result clubs care about is simple: fewer empty hours, and fewer players lost without anyone noticing. One of our Dutch partner clubs added around €7,000 in extra revenue in a single month.

Built for padel clubs, hosted in the EU.

The next phase of padel

The World Padel Report shows where the sport is going: bigger, more international, more female, and economically significant. It does not decide which clubs benefit. That depends on what happens after the booking.

The clubs that win the next phase will not be the ones with the most courts. They will be the ones that know their players best and act on it first.

Curious how your club scores? Take a look at cuchillaconnect.com.