860,000 Players, 1,553 Courts: Britain's Padel Boom in Numbers

Every padel market has its breakout statistic. Britain's is this: according to LTA figures published in March 2026, 860,000 people now play padel in Great Britain. And the infrastructure is racing to keep up — by the end of 2025, the country had 1,553 courts across 559 venues, up from 870 courts at 293 venues just twelve months earlier.

That is close to 80 per cent more courts, and nearly double the number of venues, in a single year. Whichever way you cut it, British padel is growing at a pace few sports ever experience.

The money is following the players

Growth like this attracts investment, and the numbers are stacking up. The LTA has committed more than £6 million to the sport, while the government has pledged at least £2.5 million towards covered facilities for 2026/27 — a crucial detail in a country where weatherproof courts decide whether people play all year round.

Private capital is moving too. Game4Padel has raised $13.3 million, and Slazenger — under the Frasers Group umbrella — is planning around 11 venues in 2026. The high street, in other words, has noticed.

Stormzy, Paddington and the O2

Nowhere is the boom more visible than in London. Padel Social Club, whose investors include Stormzy, has raised £5.5 million to open three new clubs: Paddington arrived around June, with sites at the O2 and in Kentish Town to follow in November. Taking padel inside the O2 says plenty about where the sport believes it belongs.

The openings keep coming across the capital and beyond. House of Racquet launched in King's Cross on 25 April, S3 Padel is developing a 43,600 square foot site in Romford, and Pure Padel has won approval for a facility in Coulsdon. What began as a curiosity for tennis clubs is becoming a category of urban leisure real estate in its own right.

The pro game arrives on cue

The professional calendar has caught up with the grassroots at exactly the right moment. This month, the FIP Beyond B2 London runs in Stratford from 23 to 26 July, part of the first season in which the FIP Tour and the British Tour stage events across all the Home Nations.

Then comes the headline act: the London P1 at Olympia in early August — with the main event from 4 August — the first Premier Padel tournament ever held in the UK. For hundreds of thousands of new British players, it will be their first chance to watch the world's best without boarding a plane.

A boom with global tailwinds

Britain's surge is part of a worldwide wave. The International Padel Federation counts more than 35 million players and 77,000-plus courts across 150 countries, with 14,000 new courts added in 2025 alone. Against that backdrop, the UK is one of the sport's most dynamic growth stories — a market that barely registered a few years ago and now measures its playing population in the hundreds of thousands.

The next milestones are already in the diary: new government-backed covered courts through 2026/27, two more Padel Social Club openings in November, and a first home Premier Padel champion to be crowned at Olympia on 9 August.