How Far Behind Is Ireland? The International Padel Gap in Numbers
Updated 24 October 2026
Irish figures re-checked against our court tracker. Open courts are unchanged since 16 October: 234 in the Republic at 73 venues, and 350 on the island at 98 venues. We added 16 schemes with planning permission granted and moved two Padel 100 sites whose planning applications were withdrawn to unverified, so the tracker now follows 164 locations and the Republic's verified pipeline is 140 courts. International figures are unchanged. Since late August the Republic has gone from 193 open courts to 234.
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 234 open courts spread across 73 operating venues in the Republic — our tracker follows 164 locations island-wide once pipeline projects are included, and 350 open courts across 98 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) | 234 open courts (73 venues) | ~4.54 | Openplay national court tracker, October 2026 (per-venue verified; 140 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 4.54 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 4.54 in about three months.
- 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 234 courts open and 140 more verified in the pipeline — and even completing every single one of those projects would leave the Republic at just over two-fifths of Dutch density.
- The island picture is stronger than the Republic's alone. Counting Northern Ireland, there are 350 open courts across 98 venues on the island. NI accounts for 116 of those 350 across 25 venues in six counties — 33% 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 — 164 tracked locations island-wide including pipeline; 73 open venues / 234 open courts in the Republic and 98 open venues / 350 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.