At Least 63 Countries Have Fielded a Padel National Team

At least 63 countries have had a documented open-level men’s or women’s padel national team in recent FIP competition records. This is a defensible minimum as of September 30, 2026, not an official worldwide total.

The count uses countries entered in the International Padel Federation’s main World Cup or European championship pathway in 2024 or 2026. It excludes junior teams and the separate age-group Seniors competitions. A country appearing in both the men’s and women’s events is counted once.

How the 63-country minimum is built

The 2026 pathway documents 45 countries

FIP’s September European qualifier list contained 27 men’s teams and 20 women’s teams. Deduplicating the two lists gives 28 countries. Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and Sweden were already qualified and absent from that qualifier, taking the documented European total to 33 (FIP European qualifier).

Twelve further countries appear in the automatic qualification lists or the Americas qualifiers: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. FIP named all three men’s and women’s teams from Canada, Mexico and the US in Toronto (Toronto qualifier). Its Asunción entry list included Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela in both categories, plus Chile in the women’s event (South American qualifier).

That produces 45 countries in the documented 2026 pathway by the research date.

Recent FIP records add another 18

Stopping at 45 would omit countries that have fielded teams recently but were not yet listed in the 2026 pathway.

The group draw for the 2024 Asia–Africa World Championship qualifier documents 14 participating countries. The United Arab Emirates was already in the 2026 count, while these 13 were additional: Australia, Bahrain, China, Egypt, Iran, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Thailand (FIP Asia–Africa groups).

FIP’s 2024 European qualifier entry list adds five more countries not found in those two sets: Kosovo, Monaco, Montenegro, San Marino and Vatican City (FIP European qualifier entries).

The deduplicated total is therefore at least 63 countries.

Why the answer is not 32, 100 or 150

Each of those numbers measures something different:

• 32 team places: the 2026 World Cup final has 16 men’s and 16 women’s entries. A country can occupy one place in each draw, so this is not a country count.
• 100 federations: FIP reports 100 affiliated federations as of 2026, but affiliation does not establish that every member currently fields an open-level national team.
• More than 150 countries: FIP says padel is played in more than 150 countries, which measures geographic presence rather than national-team participation (FIP history).

The 63-country figure should not be treated as a ceiling. The 2026 Asia–Africa qualifier was scheduled for October 26–30, after the research date, and FIP’s announcement did not yet name its entrants (FIP Asia–Africa qualifier announcement). Other countries may also have teams that did not enter the competitions counted here.

The best-supported answer is therefore: at least 63 countries have had a documented men’s or women’s padel national team, while the exact current worldwide total remains unpublished.