1.9 billion people have heard of pickleball. Now what?

If the past year in pickleball had a theme, it would be “structure” — structure in how the sport is governed, measured, regulated, and experienced around the world.

Participation alone is no longer the story: what mattered most this year was the less flashy, sometimes messy work of building sustainable systems like global rankings, unified calendars, credible federations, clearer equipment standards, and more professionalized events that signal a long-term, international future.

Obviously, Global Pickleball Report wasn’t around yet for most of what we’ll highlight in the below 2025 Year in Review, but our writer and parent company’s team at The Pickleball Clinic have been around the block. It’s that deep pickleball background that gives us the context to make some pickleball prognostications.

So, in this special edition, we’ll cover the stories that mattered most this year and cast our predictions about what’s to come in 2026.

→ This Week: 2025’s Most important pickleball stories | 2026 Global pickleball predictions

AI-driven training systems like Tennibot, smart court-booking platforms such as CourtsApp and Catch Corner, and early line-calling analytics tools including PlayReplay began solving real operational problems.

At the same time, innovations in smart paddles and noise-reduction equipment addressed long-standing barriers to growth at the community level.

Plus, an AI-generated video of a pickleball-playing robot bamboozled far too many people into believing it was real.

As the world entered a Winter Olympic year, pickleball reached an inflection point: LA ’28 no longer seems a realistic target.

Instead, attention shifted to what must exist for any future Olympic bid: independent global leadership, standardized governance, and anti-doping controls. In 2025, federation consolidation talks and public Olympic-facing rhetoric made clear that pickleball’s pathway, while longer than hoped, is now being treated seriously.

The formal launch of the Global Pickleball Alliance (see last week’s issue) delivered something the sport had never had before: a unified international calendar and a rolling world ranking system.

For the first time, performances across continents could be compared on equal footing, impacting both elite professionals and competitive amateurs worldwide.

In parallel, all three major pro organizations activated internationally in 2025: the Association of Pickleball Players staged events and development initiatives outside the U.S., while Major League Pickleball and the Professional Pickleball Association announced and executed overseas tournaments and regional expansions across Australia, Asia, Canada, and Europe—bringing top professionals directly into emerging markets and giving global rankings real, on-the-ground meaning.

In spring 2025, India’s Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports officially recognized the Indian Pickleball Association as a National Sports Federation.

This single decision unlocked government pathways, funding eligibility, and international legitimacy in one of the sport’s most important growth markets (and where 178 million people said in a survey that they play).

Throughout 2025, governing bodies and pro tours formalized new paddle certification requirements, delisted certain equipment for sanctioned play, and clarified what “legal” means at different levels.

While controversial, these moves signaled a necessary step toward international standardization. The next challenge: getting those organizations to agree on one, single body of standards.

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The amount of people in Asia who report they’ve “heard of pickleball.”

Source: PPA Tour Asia

In 2025, the Global Pickleball Federation (GPF) and United World Pickleball Federation (UWPF) announced a joint initiative and created a unification process aimed at a single IOC-compliant entity.

They’re not the only international body on the court, though — and even if GPF has since stated unification is anticipated by July 2026, the Olympic bid issue has entered the domain of “put up or shut up.”

Prediction: 2026 produces either (a) a formal unified structure with a clearer board, statutes, and continental integration or (b) a public credibility fight that forces national federations to choose sides.

This is one of the most important “Olympic pathway” points, and 2025 quietly gave it a backbone: the International Testing Agency (ITA) announced a partnership with the GPF to develop and progressively implement an independent anti-doping program over four years.

Prediction: 2026 becomes the first year where pickleball athletes, events, and federations start adjusting behavior around whereabouts, out-of-competition testing, education, and supplement risk, even if the rollout is phased and uneven across regions.

Industry insiders tell us that events which feel more like mass-participation races than exclusive competitions will become more popular in 2026.

Prediction: In 2026, the fastest-growing tournament brands worldwide will be the ones that:

“Noise management” has been a slow-burn global issue, but it’s persistent—and political (permits, neighbors, municipal restrictions). Products like the Whisper Silencer paddle are part of a broader trend of engineering and policy trying to keep courts viable; but some of these solutions remove the very “feel” of the sport from the experience of playing it.

Prediction: 2026 brings more: “quiet hours” rules and facility design standards, quieter equipment experimentation, and city-level best practices that are copy-pasted internationally.

As courts become harder to reserve, software becomes key to pickleball’s growth. In 2026, expect faster adoption of real-time booking + waitlists, open-play organization, split payments and membership models, and club analytics (utilization, revenue per court-hour).

Prediction: The countries that scale fastest in 2026 will often be the ones that solve access friction first, especially in dense cities where demand exceeds supply.

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Mornings are for high-intensity clinics, private lessons, and coached match play; afternoons and evenings are for beaches, pools, and dinners in paradise. Across four days you’ll work on drops, dinks, drives, patterns, fitness, and mindset with a staff that’s coached thousands of players from brand-new to pro-ready.

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Can you guess where we’re headed? Respond to this email with your guess. First one to get it right will receive something nice!

Here’s a hint: