How Far Behind Is Ireland? The International Padel Gap in Numbers
Updated 2 October 2026
Irish court figures re-verified venue by venue. The Republic moves from 193 courts at 64 venues to 194 at 65, and the island total from 303 at 87 venues to 302 at 88 — Sligo and Clare opened their first venues, while three previously published court counts were corrected downwards after checking operators' live booking systems. Density moves from 3.75 to 3.77 per 100,000. International figures are unchanged. 18 September: tracker extended to 144 locations after Let's Go Padel announced four further sites. 21 September: Indoor Padel Ireland opens six courts in Navan — Meath's first — taking the Republic to 200 courts at 66 venues, the island to 308 at 89, and density to 3.88 per 100,000. 27 September: six more venues enter the open count — West Wood Leopardstown (8 indoor courts, members-only booking), Halpenny Padel at Dublin Airport, Let's Go Padel Strabane and Weavers Cross, Padel 100 Monaghan United, and Charleville LTC in Dublin 9 (an existing members' club our tracker had missed) — while Banner Padel Ennis and PadelZone Celbridge each added three bookable courts. The Republic moves to 223 courts at 70 venues, the island to 339 at 95, and density to 4.33 per 100,000. The tracker now follows 146 locations. 2 October: Park Padel at Waterpark RFC in Waterford opened at the start of October with four outdoor courts, taking the Republic to 227 courts at 71 venues, the island to 343 at 96, and density to 4.41 per 100,000. Later on 2 October we added Project Padel Mullingar in Westmeath — three courts with live bookings on its Rallyd page, previously missing from our tracker — taking the Republic to 230 courts at 72 venues, the island to 346 at 97, and density to 4.47 per 100,000. The tracker now follows 147 locations.
Updated 2 October 2026 · Openplay Research · Every figure sourced and linked below; Irish court counts individually verified per venue. Free to cite with attribution and a link to this page.
Ireland's padel boom feels fast from the inside — but how does it look against the rest of Europe? We benchmarked the Republic's court stock against eight markets, from the Spanish motherland to fellow emerging markets like Germany and Poland. Two findings stand out: Ireland is already ahead of Britain per head of population — and the runway above us is still enormous.
A note on units before the table: figures below count individual courts, not venues. In Ireland's case that's 230 open courts spread across 72 operating venues in the Republic — our tracker follows 147 locations island-wide once pipeline projects are included, and 346 open courts across 97 venues on the island as a whole.
Courts per 100,000 people
| Country | Padel courts | Per 100k | Court-count source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweden | 4,220 | ~40.0 | FIP World Padel Report 2025 |
| Spain | 17,300 | ~35.5 | FIP World Padel Report 2025 |
| Denmark | 1,512 | ~25.3 | Dansk Padel Forbund via padel-court.de, Jul 2025 |
| Finland | 1,074 | ~19.2 | padel-court.de, Jul 2025 |
| Netherlands | 3,091 | ~17.3 | padel-court.de; KNLTB: 2,828 end-2024 |
| Ireland (Republic) | 230 open courts (72 venues) | ~4.47 | Openplay national court tracker, October 2026 (per-venue verified; 97 further verified courts in the pipeline) |
| Britain | 1,553 | ~2.2 | LTA, April 2026 |
| Germany | 827 | ~1.0 | padel-court.de, Jul 2025 (+63% YoY) |
| Poland | ~60 venues (est. 150–250 courts) | ~0.5 (est.) | Padelnomics, Mar 2026 — estimate |
Populations: World Bank 2024 (data.worldbank.org); Ireland uses CSO Census 2022 (5,149,139 — data.cso.ie).
What the table says
- Ireland has already overtaken Britain per capita, and the gap is widening. The Republic's 4.47 courts per 100k beats Britain's 2.2 (LTA, April 2026) — despite Britain's decade-longer head start and 860,000 players. When we first ran this benchmark in July the figure was 3.4; it has moved to 4.47 in a matter of weeks.
- Against fellow emerging markets, Ireland is well ahead: more than four times Germany's density (1.0) and more than eight times Poland's (~0.5 est.), even though Germany grew 63% last year.
- The runway is the story. Matching the Netherlands' density would require ~890 courts in the Republic. Matching Denmark: ~1,300. Matching Spain: ~1,830. Ireland has 230 courts open and 97 more verified in the pipeline — and even completing every single one of those projects would leave the Republic at just over a third of Dutch density.
- The island picture is stronger than the Republic's alone. Counting Northern Ireland, there are 346 open courts across 97 venues on the island. NI accounts for 116 of those 346 across 25 venues in six counties — 34% of the island's courts on roughly 27% of its population, driven largely by Let's Go Padel's multi-site indoor build-out.
- Globally, the FIP counts 77,300 courts across 150 nations, with 14,355 built in 2025 alone (+15.2%) — FIP World Padel Report 2025. (Playtomic/PwC's stricter club-based count is 58,300 — Global Padel Report 2026 — methodologies differ.)
The caution from the north: Sweden's crash
Density isn't destiny. Sweden built from a few hundred courts to over 4,200 in roughly three years — then oversupply, five-fold energy costs and venture-fuelled expansion collided: an estimated 120 padel companies went bankrupt between 2022 and 2024, more than 100 facilities closed, and around 600 courts were dismantled and exported (European Business Magazine, 2025; Bloomberg, Sep 2023). Finland became the only European market to shrink in 2025 (−2.8%), and Denmark's growth has slowed to single digits as urban centres saturate (padel-court.de).
Ireland's build-out looks structurally different so far — spread across many small sites rather than a handful of venture-funded warehouse clusters. Our study of who builds Irish padel courts found that, on 28 September figures, stand-alone padel centres hosted 30% of the Republic's then 223 open courts, sports clubs 28% (led by tennis and rugby clubs) and hotels 14%; GAA grounds hosted at most four courts, and schools were the biggest single host type only in the pipeline (21 of the 101 verified upcoming courts at that date). That model spreads risk and builds local demand first. But Sweden is the reason our tracker distinguishes open courts from pipeline announcements — growth curves are only impressive when the courts stay open.
Methodology & sources
Ireland: open, bookable courts only (individual courts, not venues; doubles and singles courts both counted; includes private members' clubs), from Openplay's verified national tracker — 147 tracked locations island-wide including pipeline; 72 open venues / 230 open courts in the Republic and 97 open venues / 346 open courts island-wide, each venue's court count verified against its own live booking system, September–October 2026. Where a venue is trading on a partial or soft opening, only the courts actually bookable are counted. Venues we cannot independently verify are held in a separate “unverified” category and are excluded from all open-court figures on this page. International court counts are the latest available as of August 2026 from the sources linked per row (FIP federation surveys, national federations, LTA, padel-court.de/padelfinder market surveys, Padelnomics) — methodologies and dates differ between countries and some tallies (e.g. Spain) vary by source; because Ireland's figure counts only verified bookable courts while some national tallies are broader, Ireland's relative position is if anything understated. Per-100k figures are indicative, not audited. Poland is a venue-based estimate and marked as such. Populations: World Bank 2024; Ireland CSO Census 2022. © Openplay Research 2026 — free to cite with attribution and a link to this page. Corrections: contact us.
Explore more: the County Density League · the Irish Padel Price Index · the Irish Padel Planning Register · State of Padel in Ireland 2026.