Padel rules

How to play padel: the rules in 60 seconds

Four players, two a side, on a court with glass walls. One player serves a whole game, and the four take turns game by game in an order fixed for the set. The serve goes underarm and diagonally, after the ball has bounced once behind the service line. The receiving pair lets it bounce, then returns it, and from there the rally is open. These ten rules cover almost every point you will play, each with its number in the FIP Rules of Padel:

1. Padel is two against two on an enclosed court of 20 × 10 m (The Court; rule 3.1).
2. The server stands with one foot behind the service line, bounces the ball and strikes it at or below waist height, with at least one foot on the ground (rules 6.1, 6.2 and 6.4).
3. The serve goes diagonally and must bounce in the opposite service box. The lines are good, and you get two attempts (rules 6.5, 7c and 13q).
4. The receiver must let the serve bounce before hitting it (rule 8.1).
5. Your shot must bounce on the opponents' ground before it touches their wall or fence (rule 13g).
6. Once the ball has bounced on your side, the walls and the fence are in play, and you can return it any time before the second bounce (rule 12.3).
7. You may play the ball against your own glass to send it over the net, but not against your own fence (rules 14b and 13l).
8. Touch the net with your body, racket or clothing while the ball is in play and you lose the point (rule 13a).
9. Points run 15, 30, 40, game. Six games with two clear win a set, and 6–6 goes to a tie-break (rule 1).
10. At 40–40 there are three official options: advantage, star point and golden point (rule 1).

The one that takes ten minutes to get used to is the sixth: the walls are yours to use. Nobody serves overarm, nobody loses a rally for touching the glass, and beyond that it plays like doubles with longer points. If you can rally in tennis, you can play padel within a set.

The court, the net and the glass

The court is 20 m long and 10 m wide, split across the middle by a net that is 88 cm high at the centre and 92 cm at the posts. Service lines run 6.95 m from the net on each side, and a centre line splits each half into two service boxes.

The enclosure is the part that surprises people coming from tennis. At the back the wall runs 3 m high with a further metre of metal fence above it, so the ends enclose 4 m in total. The sides mix wall and fence, and all of it is in play. A ball that bounces on the floor and then hits your own glass can still be returned; that rally-extending rebound is the shot padel is built around.

Every figure comes from the court, ball and racket chapters at the front of the Rules of Padel, which carry no rule numbers of their own. The rulebook sets no weight limit for the racket, and one court holds four players, which is why the rotating social formats scale in blocks of four.

What are the padel rules for the serve?

The serve is underarm, and the rules leave no way around it:

• Stand with one foot behind the service line, between the centre line and the side wall, and stay there until the ball is struck (rule 6.1).
• Neither foot may touch the service line, the centre line or the court in front of the line before you strike (rule 6.3).
• Bounce the ball on the ground first, inside the area you are serving from, then strike it (rules 6.1 and 6.2).
• Contact must be at or below waist height, with at least one foot on the ground (rule 6.4).
• Serve diagonally, into the service box opposite. The first serve of each game goes from the right (rule 6.5).
• You get two attempts, exactly as in tennis (rule 13q).

That settles the three things beginners most often ask about. You cannot walk or run into the serve, because rule 6.1 keeps your foot where it is until the ball is gone. You cannot jump, because rule 6.4 needs a foot on the ground at the moment you strike. And you cannot throw the ball up and hit it out of the air: the bounce is compulsory.

After the ball lands in the correct box it may touch the side or back glass and stay in play. If it touches the metal fence before the second bounce, it is a fault (rule 7e). If the serve clips the net and still lands in the right box without touching the fence, it is a net, and that serve is taken again (rule 9.1a).

The receiver has one restriction worth knowing before a first match: you cannot volley the serve. Let it bounce, then play it (rule 8.1).

What changed for the serve in 2026

The 2026 padel rules ask for one foot behind the service line, where the 2017 and 2021 editions wanted both. Everything else about the serve is the same in spirit: below the waist, after a bounce, into the diagonal box.

The walls and the fence: the padel rule that settles most arguments

Almost every on-court disagreement is a version of the same question, and the answer depends on whose side the ball is on, and who hit it last.

The ball coming to you. Once it has bounced on your ground, it may rebound off anything on your side, the glass, the corner or the metal fence, and you may still play it before the second bounce (rule 12.3). You may also take it out of the air as a volley before it bounces at all.

The ball you hit. You may send it against your own glass and let it rebound over the net; that is legal and a real shot (rule 14b). What you may not do is hit it into your own fence, or let it touch your own ground, on its way over (rule 13l).

On the opponents' side, your shot must bounce on their ground first. Hit their glass or their fence on the full and the point is theirs (rule 13g). This is exactly why the lob is such a weapon: it forces a deep bounce and pushes them back into their own glass.

Two outcomes people rarely know are in that table: if your shot bounces correctly and then lodges in the fence or comes to rest on top of the wall, the point is yours, and a ball into the corner is a perfectly good ball.

Scoring: 15, 30, 40, and what happens at deuce

Points run 15, 30, 40, game. Six games win a set, with two clear: at 5–5 you play on to 7–5, and at 6–6 a tie-break settles it, won by the first pair to 7 points with two clear. Most matches are best of three sets (rule 1).

At 40–40 the rules of padel offer three equal options, and every organiser has to pick one:

The longest-game column is our own count. On a golden point or a star point the receiving pair chooses which side receives, but may not swap positions to do it, and in mixed doubles the receiver must be the same gender as the server. Star point was adopted unanimously by FIP's general assembly on 28 November 2025.

The rulebook also recognises shorter formats you can borrow for a busy evening: a mini set to four games, a tie-break to 7 in place of a third set, or a super tie-break to 10. The choice of deuce rule is not cosmetic either: PadelLoop plans a best-of-three match at about 75 minutes with golden point and 90 with advantage, and that is per court, per round.

The padel scoreboard scores a match point by point with golden point, star point or advantage, so you can see each rule in action. Padel scoring explained goes deeper into the counting, tie-breaks included, and the padel world ranking shows who sits at the top of the professional game right now.

When do you lose the point?

The rules of padel list the ways to lose a point in rule 13. These are the ones that come up in a normal match:

Two of those have a footnote worth knowing. It is not a double hit when both of you swing and one of you strikes the ball while the other only hits their partner's racket. And where the venue has doors and play outside the court is allowed, a ball that goes out over the side wall or through the door may be chased and played from outside, which is legal, spectacular, and how most padel highlight reels start (rule 13e). A ball that goes out over the back wall cannot.

Can you play padel singles?

You can, but it is not quite the same sport. The official rules of padel have no singles chapter at all: every rule assumes a pair on each side of the net, and the FIP tours are played as doubles.

In practice clubs play it by their own agreement, in two ways. Some have a dedicated singles court, noticeably narrower than the 10 m doubles court, which keeps the rallies honest. Others play singles on a normal court, usually agreeing to treat part of the width as out, because covering 10 m alone turns the game into a fitness test.

Everything else carries over unchanged: the same underarm serve, the same walls, the same scoring. If you are three players rather than two, a rotating format such as an Americano is almost always a better evening than forcing singles onto a doubles court.

Warm-up, breaks and changing ends

The rules also put a clock on the match. These are the limits in the 2026 padel rules:

You change ends after the first, third and every following odd game of a set, and in a tie-break after every six points (rules 5.1 and 5.2). Food and drink wait for the change of ends, not the gap between points.

The rules that matter for a club night

Everything above is the rulebook. Running an evening asks two more questions the rules of padel do not answer: how long each match is, and how you decide who plays whom.

For length, pick a match format and stick to it across the courts: best of three with a super tie-break in the third, one set, a mini set to four games, or just a super tie-break to 10 when the hall closes in ninety minutes. For a social night, many clubs drop games entirely and play each match for a fixed number of points, usually 16, 24 or 32, which lands a round somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes. If you are timing rounds, remember the 20 seconds between points and the 90 seconds at a change of ends.

For who plays whom, that is what a format is. An Americano switches your partner every round and scores you individually; a Mexicano lets the standings pick the next match; a Monrad ranks a whole field of fixed pairs in a few rounds. PadelLoop draws the rounds, applies the scoring you chose and keeps the table live, and the match scoreboard will score a single match point by point.

The club-night guidance on this page, points per match and round lengths, is our own. The rules themselves come from the sources below.

Sources

This page follows the Rules of Padel published by the International Padel Federation (FIP), the body that sets the laws of the game. We read the rulebook itself rather than summaries of it, and every rule number above points into it. All sources were read on 2 October 2026.

• FIP, Rules of Padel, review of application 1 January 2026: the file dated 10 January 2026, which FIP's documents page links to.
• FIP, documents page, where the current rulebook is published.
• FIP, Between innovation and tradition: introducing the Star Point, 18 December 2025.
• Premier Padel Official Rulebook, Men's, version 2026, sections 5.2.4 and 11.9.

Two versions of the 2026 Rules of Padel carry the same date on FIP's site. Where they differ, on the serve (rule 6.3) and on the penalty table, this page follows the January file.