Padel in the USA: Growth Statistics 2026

Key US padel statistics at a glance

• 1,073,000 Americans played padel in 2025 — 835,000 casual and 238,000 regular players, per the SFIA's first-ever padel tracking [1].
• The US passed 1,000 courts in April 2026, up from 688 in mid-2025 — a ~56% annualized build rate [1][4].
• Florida holds ~41% of US courts, followed by Texas (~18%) and California (~10%) [3].
• US Google searches for "padel" crossed 100,000/month for the first time in July 2026 — 21x the 2019 level (original analysis) [9].
• "Padel courts near me" searches are up 131% year over year — growing four times faster than general padel interest (original analysis) [9].
• America has one court for every ~1,073 players; Spain has one for every ~347. Matching Spain's ratio would take ~3,100 US courts today (original analysis) [1][11].

How many Americans play padel?

The most rigorous participation number comes from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, which added padel to its 2026 Topline Participation Report after surveying 18,000 Americans ages six and up: 1,073,000 Americans played padel in 2025 [1]. The split matters for anyone modeling the market:

• 835,000 casual players — played 1–7 times in the year.
• 238,000 regular players — played 8+ times in the year.

That means roughly 0.32% of Americans have picked up a padel racket — against 12.7% of Spaniards [11]. The penetration gap is about 40x, the cleanest single measure of how early the American market still is. For context, racquet sports as a whole grew from 13.9% of the US population in 2020 to 20.6% in 2025 [1] — padel is riding a category-wide wave, not fighting it.

App-tracked data tells the same story from another angle: the State of Padel in the U.S. Report counted 112,872 active players on booking platforms as of Q2 2025 [4] — about one in ten of SFIA's total, consistent with a sport where most play is still informal.

How many padel courts does the US have?

The United States passed 1,000 padel courts in April 2026, spread across at least 31 states [1]. The build-out is accelerating:

*Approximate: Playtomic's Global Padel Report counted roughly 250 new clubs and 330 new courts added during 2025 alone [3]. Going from 688 courts to 1,000+ in about ten months is a 45% increase — a ~56% annualized build rate (our calculation). About 39% of US courts are indoor [6], a sign the model is spreading beyond year-round sun markets.

Where the courts are

• Florida: ~41% of all US courts
• Texas: ~18%
• California: ~10%

Three states hold nearly 70% of American padel infrastructure [3][6] — which is also a map of where the next wave of growth has to come from: everywhere else.

America's padel court shortage, quantified (original analysis)

Here is a set of numbers nobody else has published. Divide SFIA's player count by the court count and compare it with the sport's most mature market:

Two conclusions fall out of this table. First, US demand is already ahead of US supply: serving today's million players at Spain's player-to-court ratio would require roughly 3,100 courts — three times what exists. Second, the ceiling is extraordinary: matching Spain's per-capita court density would imply on the order of 120,000 US courts. Even the boldest industry projection (10,000 by 2030) is less than a tenth of that. Sources and method: player and court figures from [1] and [11], populations from the US Census Bureau (~340M) and Spain's INE (~49M) [10]; arithmetic is ours.

Search demand: the growth curve nobody has charted (original data)

We pulled monthly US Google search volumes for "padel" from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer going back to January 2019 [9]. The curve is the single best real-time indicator of American interest in the sport:

• July 2026 was the first month ever above 100,000 searches (101,000).
• Search demand has compounded at ~62% per year for six consecutive years (2019–2025) — through a pandemic, an inflation cycle, and the pickleball boom.
• Americans searched for padel roughly 914,000 times in the last twelve months — 21x the 2019 total.
• The US now ranks sixth worldwide in searches for "padel," behind France, Indonesia, the UK, Italy, and Mexico [9] — notable for a country that barely registered five years ago. (Spain ranks lower on this exact spelling because Spanish speakers search "pádel.")

Intent to play is growing faster than curiosity

General interest is one thing; wanting a court is another. Searches for "padel courts near me" — the purest signal of someone trying to actually play — have grown far faster than the sport's headline curve:

That is a 76x increase from 2020 to 2025, and the first half of 2026 is running 131% above the first half of 2025 — more than four times the growth rate of general padel searches (+31%). In plain terms: Americans aren't just reading about padel anymore; they're looking for somewhere to play it — and the court supply documented above hasn't caught up.

The pickleball comparison everyone asks about

Pickleball is still far bigger in the US — but the trajectories have crossed. Using the same Ahrefs monthly data for both sports [9]:

Pickleball's US search demand grew about 5% from 2023 to 2025 (a mature, plateauing curve); padel's grew about 150% over the same window. For every eight pickleball searches in America there is now one padel search — down from twenty-three just three years ago.

Organized play is scaling even faster

The competitive layer of the sport is growing faster than the recreational base [2][8]:

• USPA individual membership: 163 (2020) → 1,917 (2024) → 2,915 (2025) — up 53.5% in one year and 18x since 2020 (a 78% compound annual growth rate, our calculation).
• Member clubs: 108 at the end of 2025, up 51.5% year over year.
• Sanctioned tournaments: 48 (2024) → 104 (2025) → 255 already scheduled for 2026 — a five-fold increase in two years.
• National Padel League, season one: 1,956 players, 180 teams, 55 clubs, 37 cities [6].
• US Open Padel Championships: 240 participants and a $35,000+ prize pool in 2025, more than double the prior year [2].

The global context

• Worldwide courts reached 77,300 by the end of 2025, up 15.2% in a year, with 14,355 new courts built in a single reporting cycle [5].
• Spain remains the heartland: ~17,300 courts, ~4,500 clubs, 6 million players — 12.7% of its population [11].
• Playtomic's Global Padel Report classifies the US as a "Diamond in the Rough" — early adoption, outsized long-term potential [3].
• The global padel economy was projected to grow from €2 billion in 2022 to €6 billion in 2026 [7].
• The US holds about 1.3% of the world's padel courts despite having about 4% of the world's population and the world's largest sports economy (our calculation from [5]) — the clearest single statistic of how much room is left.

The gear economy is scaling alongside the player base: see our padel racket price data for the first published pricing index of the US padel racket market.

FAQs

Methodology & citation policy

Published statistics on this page are drawn from the primary sources listed below and were verified in July 2026. Original statistics (the search demand index, local-intent growth, the pickleball ratio, and the court-shortage comparisons) were computed by PadelTennisReviews.com from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer monthly US search volume data (exported July 3, 2026) and from the cited player, court, and population figures. Where we derived a number, the text says so explicitly. Search volumes are Ahrefs estimates of Google search demand and carry the usual margin of error of third-party clickstream models; year-over-year comparisons use matching periods to avoid seasonal distortion.

Journalists and researchers: every statistic on this page is free to republish under CC BY 4.0 — credit "PadelTennisReviews.com" with a link. For the underlying monthly data table, a custom cut, or comment on any figure, contact us via padeltennisreviews.com.

Sources

1. United States Padel Association: "Padel Surpasses One Million Players in the United States" — reporting SFIA 2026 Topline Participation Report data (April 2026).
2. USPA 2025 Annual Report (January 2026).
3. Playtomic Global Padel Report 2026.
4. SGB Media: coverage of the Playtomic Global Padel Report and the State of Padel in the U.S. Report (Q2 2025 US court and active-player counts).
5. Padel Business Magazine: FIP World Padel Report 2025 (global court counts).
6. Actu Padel: "1,000 padel courts in the USA" (April 2026; state shares, indoor share, National Padel League).
7. Actu Padel: economic analysis of the global padel market (€2B→€6B projection).
8. Padel Business Magazine: "USPA membership rises by 53.5%".
9. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, monthly US search volume data for "padel," "padel courts near me," and "pickleball," January 2019 – July 2026 (exported July 3, 2026). Analysis by PadelTennisReviews.com.
10. U.S. Census Bureau population estimate (~340 million, 2025) and Spain's INE population estimate (~49 million, 2025), used for per-capita calculations.
11. TrustPadel: "Padel Worldwide Growth: The Data Behind the Boom" (Spain court, club, player, and penetration figures).