The week after the Olympia party was never going to match it for noise, but it turned out to be one of the more useful weeks of the year for anyone tracking where British padel goes next. GB’s route to the World Cup was confirmed, Scotland finally got a national Open, two of our best players surfaced in very different corners of the sport, and a Wiltshire market town found a novel use for a dead supermarket. Here is your UK round-up for 10 to 16 August 2026.
GB’s road to Doha runs through Madrid
The most significant British story of the week landed on Monday. The International Padel Federation confirmed that the European qualifying tournament for November’s FIP World Cup will be staged at the Pádel G24 club in Madrid from 22 to 26 September, and Great Britain will contest both the men’s and women’s draws.
The maths is brutal. Fifty-five national teams from 29 countries will fight over just four places at the World Cup finals in Doha, two in the men’s event and two in the women’s. Twelve men’s teams and eleven women’s teams are already through on ranking, host status or earlier regional qualifiers, so Madrid is where the remaining European hopefuls sort themselves out over five days.
GB will draw from the group that acquitted itself so well at Olympia, with Aimee Gibson, Catherine Rose, Christian Medina Murphy, Louie Harris and Tia Norton all in contention. The LTA has said team selections will follow in due course. Given how much goodwill the London P1 generated, a GB side qualifying for a World Cup two months later would be about the best possible follow-up.
Scotland lands its first national Open
Tennis Scotland announced on Wednesday that the inaugural Scottish Open Padel Championships will be held at Racket Barn in Glasgow from 18 to 20 September, with entries now live. It carries a £4,000 prize fund and, importantly, LTA British Tour Grade One ranking points, which should pull in strong fields from well beyond Scotland.
Racket Barn is Scotland’s biggest indoor padel facility and will also host Finals Day of the fourth Padel Scottish Cup on 6 September, closing out weeks of club versus club knockout play. Tennis Scotland chief executive Blane Dodds noted that players can now “make history by becoming national champions”, while Scotland’s men’s No.2 Sam Macneil welcomed a Grade One event returning to home soil.
The context matters here. Scotland now has more than 80 courts with more in the pipeline, tracking the same growth curve as the rest of Britain, and a properly ranked national championship is the sort of infrastructure that turns casual growth into a competitive scene.
British players on the move
Two days after her main-draw outing with Catherine Rose at Olympia, GB women’s No.2 Aimee Gibson was on a plane to Australia. She is one of the invited players at the first Padel Invitational presented by UBS, staged on a custom-built court on the Northern Broadwalk at the Sydney Opera House.
It is an unapologetic showcase event, run by Padel Australia with Premier Padel and the FIP, and the agenda is Olympic. Organisers are pitching padel for inclusion at the 2032 Brisbane Games, with the IOC now expected to confirm the Brisbane programme in early 2027. Gibson put it plainly to The Padel Paper: “The event will hopefully help get padel into the Olympics in 2032. We’re showcasing what the sport is to the Australian public.” She lines up alongside Juan Martín Díaz, Alejandra Salazar, Maxi Sánchez and Australian tennis convert Pat Rafter.
Closer to home, GB men’s No.2 and reigning British champion Louie Harris was announced on Thursday as padel ambassador for UK sports travel operator Active Away, alongside a coaching programme he co-designed. It runs across all of the company’s padel trips, aimed at intermediate players and upwards, with Harris attending two 2027 trips in person, from 18 to 21 March and 15 to 18 April at the Hyatt Regency Vilamoura in the Algarve. Places are capped at 16 players per trip.
Clubs and courts: padel meets the arcade
The week’s most eye-catching venue story came from Wiltshire. Padel Chippenham, a four-court indoor club opening in September inside a former Tesco unit at the Emery Gate shopping centre, confirmed it will install MultiBall, a wall-mounted interactive sports screen with a library of more than 45 games and training apps.
Players hit, throw or kick balls at the display and high-speed tracking registers the shots in real time. The technology has appeared at Wimbledon and sits in the Asics flagship store in Barcelona, so this is not a gimmick bolted onto a struggling venue. It is a deliberate attempt to make a padel club work as a town-centre destination for school groups, birthday parties and families, not just league players. Emery Gate owner Acorn Property Group sees it as a way of keeping the centre relevant while longer-term redevelopment plans progress.
Given how many UK clubs are now moving into retail and industrial units, Chippenham is worth watching as a template. A four-court club alone is a tight business; a four-court club that also sells casual entertainment is a rather different proposition.
The week ahead
Attention now turns to Madrid selection news from the LTA, and to Scottish Open entries as the fields firm up ahead of 18 September. If the London P1 has tempted you back onto court, our guides to the best padel rackets in 2026 and the best padel shoes for UK players are the sensible place to start before you spend anything.
Sources
- The Padel Paper: GB’s padel stars to reassemble in Madrid for FIP World Cup qualifier
- The Padel Paper: Entries open for inaugural Scottish Open Padel Championships
- The Padel Paper: From London to Sydney, Aimee Gibson’s Olympic quest
- The Padel Paper: Louie Harris launches coaching programme with Active Away
- The Padel Paper: Padel Chippenham to launch interactive Multiball
