If you've noticed more padel courts popping up near you over the last year, you're not imagining it. UK padel has more than doubled in twelve months — 860,000 adults and juniors now play at least once a year, up from 400,000 in 2024 and just 15,000 back in 2019. Court numbers have nearly doubled too, from 870 to over 1,500 in a single year. It is, by a distance, the fastest-growing sport in Britain right now.
And this week, the sport's top tier finally arrived here properly. The Premier Padel London P1 is running at Olympia London from 4 to 9 August 2026 — the first time professional padel's elite tour has staged an event on British soil. If you've been curious what all the fuss is about, this is the week it's impossible to ignore.
The players behind the boom
Padel's rise has been powered by a genuinely young, genuinely dominant cast — mostly Spanish and Argentine, several of them barely out of their teens. Arturo Coello, men's world number one alongside Agustín Tapia, has passed 50 career titles already. Gemma Triay and Delfi Brea currently sit at the top of the women's game, having ended Ariana Sánchez and Paula Josemaría's 840-day reign at number one. And 19-year-old Claudia Fernández Sánchez broke into the world's top 10 faster than anyone in the sport's history — padel's answer to a teenage prodigy story.
We got here before most people noticed
We launched the Players Couture Padel Collection a couple of weeks ago — hand-drawn artwork of the players actually driving the sport's growth, across hoodies and tees, the same way we've always done football, golf and darts. Turns out the timing worked out rather well. More names are being added as the tour keeps producing new stars, so if your favourite isn't in there yet, it probably will be soon.
Whether you're already playing twice a week or you're padel-curious after watching London P1 highlights this weekend, there's a genuine argument this sport is about to become as woven into UK sporting culture as five-a-side football or park tennis has been for decades. Worth getting ahead of it.
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