UK Padel Statistics 2026: Players, Courts, Prices and Growth

The million is not a count of weekly players, club members or registered competitors. The clearest defined annual figure is 860,000 adults and juniors who played at least once during 2025.¹

One boundary matters from the start. These national LTA totals cover Great Britain, meaning England, Scotland and Wales. They are often described online as UK figures, but Northern Ireland is not included in the published participation series.

UK padel statistics at a glance

The source, period and counting method belong with the number. A person who tried padel once, a monthly player and a ranked competitor are three different measures.

How many people play padel in the UK?

The latest official headline is one million padel participants in Britain. The LTA announced the milestone on 15 May 2026.¹

The title of this page uses “UK padel statistics” because that is the common search term. The number itself covers Great Britain. No equivalent Northern Ireland series is included.

For comparisons between full years, use the LTA’s 860,000 figure for 2025. It refers to adults and juniors who played at least once during the year. That is broader than regular or monthly participation.

The difference is easy to miss:

The one-million figure is useful as a scale estimate. The 860,000 annual figure is better for year-on-year analysis because its period and threshold are explicit.

How fast has padel participation grown in Britain?

Sources: LTA participation releases from March and May 2026.^{1 3} Percentages are PadelFormat calculations.

The increase from 15,000 in 2019 to one million in May 2026 is 66.7 times, or about 6,567%. The number is striking enough without turning it into a forecast.

The May milestone should not be presented as a 2026 growth rate. It is a new headline estimate published partway through the year, compared with a full calendar-year figure for 2025.

The strongest clean comparison is 2024 to 2025. Annual participation rose from 400,000 to 860,000, an increase of 460,000 people or 115%.

The LTA also estimated that roughly two-thirds of the one million padel participants play tennis.¹ Applied loosely, that points to about 667,000 crossover players. It is an estimate, not a count of named individuals. The overlap helps explain why tennis clubs and multi-racket venues have been such an efficient route for new padel courts.

Why do some official UK padel figures disagree?

The LTA has revised several historical totals in later releases.

Sources: LTA strategy announcement, July 2025 court release and March and May 2026 participation releases.^{1 3 4 5}

The LTA has not published a reconciliation explaining each change. Backfilled venue records, duplicate removal or a changed reporting definition are possible explanations, but the public releases do not say which one applies.

This page uses the later restated values when calculating recent growth. It keeps the older values visible when the revision itself matters.

That approach avoids two common mistakes. The first is combining numbers from different releases as though the dataset never changed. The second is deciding that an unexplained revision must be a new court opening or a lost player.

How many padel courts are there in Britain?

The LTA counted 1,825 courts across 551 venues in May 2026.¹

The published inventory has moved quickly:

Court supply increased by 683 during 2025, based on the restated end-2024 and end-2025 totals. That is growth of 78.5%.

The inventory then rose by another 272 courts between the end of 2025 and 15 May 2026. Spread over 135 days, that is just over two courts per day.

That calculation describes the change between two published inventories. It is not proof that exactly two new courts were physically completed each day. New construction, late registrations, revised records and closures can all affect an inventory.

The venue count makes the warning concrete. Published courts rose from 1,553 to 1,825 between the end of 2025 and May 2026, while venues fell from 559 to 551. The LTA did not explain the eight-venue reduction. It would be wrong to describe every net court added as a brand-new venue.

Did court supply keep up with player growth?

Not during the cleanest comparable full-year period.

Sources: LTA March and May 2026 releases.^{1 3} Ratios are PadelFormat calculations.

Annual participation grew 115% in 2025. The restated court inventory grew 78.5%. The annual-participant count per court rose from about 460 to 554, an increase of 20.4%.

This ratio is not court utilisation. It does not know how often each person played, whether a court was indoor or outdoor, or how many hours it opened. It is still a useful pressure signal because the numerator and denominator come from the same national publisher and period.

The May 2026 line should be read more cautiously. One million is a milestone estimate rather than a completed annual participation count. The 548 figure is shown for scale, not as a full-year utilisation measure.

Why is it still difficult to book a padel court?

National court growth and local court availability can move in opposite directions.

The World Padel Report 2026 placed the UK in its “Hotspot” market group. In the commercial clubs observed through Playtomic data, average peak-time court occupancy was about 85%. Roughly half of surveyed UK players reported difficulty finding a peak slot.²

Those results fit the national pressure ratio. More people entered the sport faster than the court inventory grew in 2025.

They do not prove that every UK club is 85% full. The report draws on Playtomic platform data and Strategy& analysis. Its commercial sample is more likely to capture digitally booked operators than membership-only clubs, municipal sites or informal facilities.²

The same report estimated monthly gross merchandise value of about €9,900 per court for the UK commercial-club sample.² That is booking value processed in the observed market, not club profit. It does not subtract rent, staffing, finance, energy, maintenance, tax or unused off-peak hours.

Peak pressure can exist beside empty daytime courts. A national court count cannot show whether a player can book at 7pm on a wet Tuesday within a reasonable drive of home.

Where are Britain’s padel courts?

The most complete public regional split found for this article is the LTA’s July 2025 snapshot. It counted 1,004 courts.

Source: LTA July 2025 court release.⁵ Shares are PadelFormat calculations and may not sum perfectly due to rounding.

London and the South East held almost three in ten courts in that snapshot. Scotland and Wales together held 7.9%.

The table is already dated. Tennis Scotland reported more than 80 courts operating in Scotland by 3 August 2026.⁶ Compared with the 45 in July 2025, that is growth of at least 77.8%.

The Scottish update cannot be inserted into the older table to create a new British total. The other regions have not all published matching August 2026 counts.

Wales has announced expansion plans, but no compatible current exact total was found. A forecast that courts will double is not the same as a completed-court count.

Are these UK statistics or Great Britain statistics?

They are Great Britain statistics.

The LTA is the recognised governing body for padel in Great Britain. Its national releases and competition calendar cover England, Scotland and Wales. The FIP also lists Great Britain as the affiliated federation.⁷

Northern Ireland has an active padel scene. Belfast hosted an FIP Silver tournament in July 2026.⁸ No current Northern Ireland participation estimate was found that uses the same method as the LTA’s British series.

Adding club-directory results or operator claims from Northern Ireland to an LTA total would mix different counting systems. Until a compatible figure is published, the honest national headline is:

One million padel participants in Great Britain, with no equivalent current UK-wide total.

How much does padel cost in Britain?

The LTA estimated an average off-peak booking at £27 per court per hour in 2025, or about £7 per person for doubles.³ Both values are rounded.

That figure is not a national price cap. Peak indoor courts in high-cost cities can be much more expensive. Memberships, coaching, racket hire and local subsidies also change what a player pays.

The bigger access question is not only price. It is whether affordable courts exist at useful times and can operate through winter.

The LTA reported that 81% of venues responding to its survey took part in community outreach.³ The release did not publish the number of responding venues beside that percentage. It is evidence of activity among respondents, not proof that 81% of all British venues run the same programmes.

Who paid for the court growth?

Commercial operators account for a large part of the visible expansion, while public and governing-body funding has targeted gaps in access.

By March 2026, the LTA and the LTA Tennis Foundation said they had invested more than £7.5 million in padel infrastructure. That support helped unlock a further £10.5 million and backed 112 courts at 57 venues.³

PadelFormat calculations from those rounded totals show:

• At least £18 million of combined project capital was supported.
• Every £1 of LTA and Foundation investment was paired with about £1.40 from other sources.
• The combined backed capital was a little over £160,000 per court.

The last figure is not a quote for buying a padel court. Projects can include groundworks, planning, covers, lighting, access work and other site costs. The £18 million and £7.5 million figures are also published as minimums.

The UK government committed a further £3 million for covered tennis and padel facilities in the 2026 to 2027 financial year. The LTA expected that funding to support three projects.¹ That points to a focus on covered access rather than raw court count alone.

Britain beat its 2026 padel targets early

The LTA launched a five-year padel strategy in September 2024. Its first targets ran to the end of 2026.⁴ Several were passed before the deadline.

Sources: LTA strategy, 2025 annual report and 2026 participation releases.^{1 3 4 9} Percentages are PadelFormat calculations.

The annual-participation target was not edged past. The 2025 result was 2.15 times the target. The court total reached 1.825 times its target by May 2026.

Awareness rose from 38% in late 2024 to 57% at the end of 2025.³ That is an increase of 19 percentage points, or 50% relative to the earlier level. The LTA estimated the newer figure represented about 31 million adults.

Course numbers cannot be used as a direct workforce total. By May 2026, 1,676 people had completed Intro to Padel Coaching CPD and 427 had completed Instructor Core Training.¹ The groups may overlap, and a course completion does not prove that the person is actively coaching.

The target table exposes a problem for the next strategy update. Targets based on scarcity are less useful once supply and participation have passed them. Future reporting needs regular-play frequency, local travel time, covered-court access and peak availability.

Is competitive padel growing too?

The LTA sanctioned 643 Grade 3 to 5 competitions in 2025, up from 409 in 2024.³ That is an increase of 57.2%.

The 2026 calendar included five FIP Tour events, seven Grade 1 events, 21 Grade 2 events and three FIP Promises junior events. It offered more than 35 weeks of national and international competition across England, Scotland and Wales.¹⁰

Britain also hosted its first Premier Padel P1 in London in August 2026. The organiser reported more than 20,000 spectators across the week at Olympia.¹¹ Attendance and participation measure different behaviour, but the event shows that the British market now supports a major professional stop as well as club-level demand.

British performance made one of the original strategy targets. Aimee Gibson and Catherine Rose both entered the FIP top 100 during 2025.⁹ Rankings move each week, so the achievement is more durable than a single live rank quoted without a date.

What the public data still cannot tell us

Britain has frequent headline updates and no public dashboard that reconciles them.

The gaps matter:

• No current monthly or weekly participation figure comparable with the annual series
• No compatible participation total for Northern Ireland
• No current national split by England, Scotland and Wales
• No consistent public series for age, gender, disability, income or ethnicity
• No current regional court table matching the May 2026 total
• No national split between indoor, covered and outdoor courts
• No consistent split between commercial, club, school, university and public courts
• No published distribution of peak, off-peak and member prices
• No construction and closure log explaining changes in the court inventory
• No denominator beside some venue-survey percentages

These gaps do not make the growth unreal. They limit what can be claimed about access, retention and who benefits from the new supply.

For the worldwide picture, see our global padel statistics page. Newer players often start with padel tips for beginners, and busier court time makes padel injuries worth reading about. If the extra playing time means new kit, we track padel shoes and run a racket chooser.

Frequently asked questions

How many people play padel in the UK in 2026?

The LTA estimated that one million adults and juniors were playing padel across Great Britain by May 2026. The best-defined full-year figure is 860,000 people who played at least once during 2025. Neither figure includes a compatible Northern Ireland estimate, so they should not be described as a complete United Kingdom census.

How many padel courts are there in the UK?

The LTA counted 1,825 courts across 551 venues in Great Britain in May 2026. A current compatible Northern Ireland total was not included. The court figure is a published inventory and may change through construction, closures, late registrations and data revisions.

How fast is padel growing in Britain?

Annual participation rose from 400,000 in 2024 to 860,000 in 2025, an increase of 115%. The restated court inventory rose from 870 to 1,553 over the same period, an increase of 78.5%.

Is padel the fastest-growing sport in the UK?

Padel is growing very quickly, but no neutral dataset compares every UK sport using the same participation definition and reporting period. The measurable claim is that British padel participation more than doubled in 2025 while the court inventory grew 78.5%.

Why do different websites give different UK court totals?

Some count Great Britain, while others say UK. Some count courts and others count venues or clubs. Directory and booking-platform coverage also differs. The LTA has revised some historical totals in later releases, so the publisher and date should always sit beside the number.

What is the average cost of a padel court in the UK?

The LTA estimated an average off-peak booking of £27 per court per hour in 2025, or roughly £7 per person for doubles. This is an average, not a fixed national price. Peak indoor bookings can cost more.

Why are peak padel courts difficult to book?

Participation grew faster than the court inventory during 2025. The World Padel Report observed about 85% peak occupancy in its UK commercial-club sample, and around half of surveyed players reported difficulty booking peak slots. These are platform and survey findings, not a census of every venue.

Which part of Britain has the most padel courts?

London and the South East had 297 courts in the LTA's July 2025 regional snapshot, 29.6% of the published British total. A full region-by-region table matching the May 2026 national count has not been published.

Does the one-million figure mean one million regular players?

No. The LTA's million is a broad participation milestone. The defined 2025 figure counts 860,000 adults and juniors who played at least once during the year. No comparable current weekly or monthly figure has been published.

Has Britain met the LTA's 2026 padel targets?

Britain passed the targets for annual participation, courts and adult awareness before the end-2026 deadline. The top-100 player target was achieved in 2025. Current comparable results for monthly participation and the active coach workforce were not found.

Sources

• 1. LTA, 1,000,000 padel players in Britain, 15 May 2026
• 2. Playtomic and Strategy&, World Padel Report 2026: market dynamics, methodology and club value, accessed 27 August 2026
• 3. LTA, 860,000 players: LTA unveils latest figures on growth of padel in Britain, 25 March 2026
• 4. LTA, LTA announces new padel strategy, 24 September 2024
• 5. LTA, Padel's rapid rise: Great Britain reaches 1,000 padel courts, 17 July 2025
• 6. Tennis Scotland, Tennis Scotland to host major national padel competitions, 3 August 2026
• 7. International Padel Federation, Great Britain federation profile, accessed 27 August 2026
• 8. International Padel Federation, FIP Silver R3 Bull Padel Cup, Belfast, July 2026
• 9. LTA, Annual Report and Accounts show growth of tennis and padel in 2025, 20 May 2026
• 10. LTA, LTA padel performance competition calendar confirmed for 2026, January 2026
• 11. Premier Padel, London's first champions crowned as 20,000 fans pack Olympia, August 2026