Round Robin Padel: Schedules for 4 to 12 Players
Quick Answer: A round robin means everyone plays everyone. With individuals rotating partners, n players produce n(n−1)/2 pairings — 3 at four players, 10 at five, 28 at eight. With fixed pairs, the same formula counts fixtures. Below are printable schedules for 4, 5, 8 and 12 players.
"Round robin" gets used for two different things in padel, and the confusion is worth clearing up before you print anything.
A round robin of pairs means fixed teams, each playing every other team once. That is what a club box league runs, and the maths is the same as any league table.
A round robin of individuals means partners rotate so that each player plays alongside every other player once. That is a whist rotation, and it is what people mean when they say "everyone plays with everyone." It is also the skeleton of americano — americano is an individual round robin with rally-point scoring bolted on top.
This page is the arithmetic and the tables for both. The wider set of options by group size is in the guide to padel formats.
The maths
Both versions run on the same formula. For n entrants, the number of distinct pairs is n(n−1)/2.
| Players | Distinct pairings | Does a complete rotation close? | Courts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 6 | Yes — 3 rounds, nobody sits | 1 |
| 5 | 10 | Yes — 5 rounds, one player sits each round | 1 |
| 6 | 15 | No — 6 rounds give each player 4 of 5 partners | 1 |
| 7 | 21 | No — 7 rounds give each player 3 or 4 of 6 partners | 1 |
| 8 | 28 | Yes — 7 rounds, nobody sits | 2 |
| 12 | 66 | Yes — 11 rounds, nobody sits | 3 |
Two things fall out of that table. First, the arithmetic only closes at two kinds of player count: divisible by four, where a complete rotation takes n−1 rounds with everybody on court every round, and four-plus-one, where it takes n rounds with one player sitting each time. At six, seven, ten or eleven players it never closes exactly, so you play as many rounds as fit and accept that some pairs never happen — which is fine, and has its own schedules in padel with 5, 6 or 7 players.
Second, nobody actually plays a complete twelve-player rotation: eleven rounds at 12 minutes each is nearly two and a half hours of play before you add changeovers.
Building these by hand is harder than it looks. Host A Tourney says so bluntly — "drafting an americano schedule by hand is notoriously difficult" (Americano Padel: Rules, Scoring & Schedule Setup) — because each round must use four fresh pairs that also spread opponents evenly. Use a table below, or the padel rotation planner for 4 to 10 players on one court with the fairness numbers shown.
4 players, one court, 3 rounds
The complete set. There is no fourth arrangement.
| Round | Match |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 + 2 vs 3 + 4 |
| 2 | 1 + 3 vs 2 + 4 |
| 3 | 1 + 4 vs 2 + 3 |
Every player partners each of the others once and opposes each of them twice. Three sets to six fits a 90-minute booking; the full evening plan is how to run a padel night for 4 friends.
5 players, one court, 5 rounds
The most elegant schedule in small-group padel. Everyone sits out exactly once, and all ten possible pairings occur exactly once.
| Round | Sitting | Match |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | 1 + 2 vs 3 + 4 |
| 2 | 4 | 1 + 3 vs 2 + 5 |
| 3 | 3 | 1 + 5 vs 2 + 4 |
| 4 | 2 | 1 + 4 vs 3 + 5 |
| 5 | 1 | 2 + 3 vs 4 + 5 |
Check it yourself: ten pairs among five players, ten pairings in the table, none repeated. Everybody plays four rounds. Five rounds of short matches needs about 90 minutes.
8 players, two courts, 7 rounds
This is the good one. Most eight-player tables you will find online guarantee that everyone partners everyone once and then let the opponents fall where they may. This schedule does both jobs: every player partners each of the other seven exactly once and faces each of them exactly twice. Nobody sits out, all seven rounds.
| Round | Court 1 | Court 2 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 + 2 vs 3 + 4 | 5 + 6 vs 7 + 8 |
| 2 | 1 + 3 vs 5 + 7 | 2 + 4 vs 6 + 8 |
| 3 | 1 + 4 vs 5 + 8 | 2 + 3 vs 6 + 7 |
| 4 | 1 + 5 vs 2 + 6 | 3 + 7 vs 4 + 8 |
| 5 | 1 + 6 vs 3 + 8 | 2 + 5 vs 4 + 7 |
| 6 | 1 + 7 vs 4 + 6 | 2 + 8 vs 3 + 5 |
| 7 | 1 + 8 vs 2 + 7 | 3 + 6 vs 4 + 5 |
Seven rounds at 24 rally points runs about 100 minutes with changeovers; at 16 points it fits comfortably in 90. If you only have two hours including warm-up, play rounds 1 to 6 and stop — the partner spread is still even, and nobody will notice the missing round except the person who was due to partner player 1.
12 players, three courts
A complete rotation is 11 rounds, which almost nobody plays. What follows is the first six rounds of the complete cycle, so partner variety stays perfect for as long as you run it: no pair repeats, and every player is on court every round.
| Round | Court 1 | Court 2 | Court 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 + 12 vs 2 + 11 | 3 + 10 vs 4 + 9 | 5 + 8 vs 6 + 7 |
| 2 | 2 + 12 vs 1 + 3 | 4 + 11 vs 5 + 10 | 6 + 9 vs 7 + 8 |
| 3 | 3 + 12 vs 2 + 4 | 1 + 5 vs 6 + 11 | 7 + 10 vs 8 + 9 |
| 4 | 4 + 12 vs 3 + 5 | 2 + 6 vs 1 + 7 | 8 + 11 vs 9 + 10 |
| 5 | 5 + 12 vs 4 + 6 | 3 + 7 vs 2 + 8 | 1 + 9 vs 10 + 11 |
| 6 | 6 + 12 vs 5 + 7 | 4 + 8 vs 3 + 9 | 2 + 10 vs 1 + 11 |
Six rounds at 16 points is about 90 minutes of play. If you want to run further, the pattern continues by rotating players 1 to 11 one position while player 12 stays fixed — which is exactly how these tables are generated.
The fixed-pairs version
If you enter as teams rather than individuals, the round robin is simpler and the arithmetic is the league-table kind: t teams produce t(t−1)/2 fixtures.
| Teams | Fixtures | Rounds (all teams playing) | Courts needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 6 | 3 | 2 |
| 5 | 10 | 5 (one team rests) | 2 |
| 6 | 15 | 5 | 3 |
| 8 | 28 | 7 | 4 |
Six teams on three courts over five rounds is a genuinely good club evening: 15 fixtures, everyone plays every round, roughly two hours at short sets. Over weeks rather than hours, the same structure is what padel box leagues run, split into boxes of four to six so nobody has 15 fixtures to chase.
Printing and scoring it
A round robin lives or dies on the sheet. Two practical rules:
- One sheet, one pen, one place. Tape it to the bench between courts. Four people entering scores into four phones produces four different tables.
- Write the round numbers in advance. The printable padel score sheet gives you names, date and match rows, so the rotation goes on the sheet before anyone arrives.
For scoring an individual round robin, decide before round one whether you are counting match wins, games won or rally points, because they can produce three different winners from the same evening. Match wins are the crudest; rally points are the most granular; games won sits in the middle and is the best fit for a night played as real sets.
What the schedule cannot do
A round robin is a fair way to fill an evening. It is not a competition structure that survives contact with next week.
Run the eight-player table above and you will finish with a correct, defensible ranking of the eight people who happened to be there tonight. Next Tuesday six of them are busy, two new people come, and you print a different table. Nothing accumulates. For a club social that is the right design; for a group of four or six who play each other every week it is the reason nobody can say who is genuinely best.
Rivals is built for that second group: one court, four players, the three pairings, results that accumulate across years, head-to-head records, belts to defend, and a margin-aware rating that counts how close each set was. It is not a tournament generator — it does not run americano, mexicano or any bracket, and for a 16-person club night the free web generators are the honest recommendation. Free is one crew of up to four players, with nothing inside it metered and no ads.
FAQ
How many matches are in a padel round robin?
For fixed pairs, t teams play t(t−1)/2 fixtures: six with four teams, ten with five, fifteen with six. For individuals rotating partners, n players produce n(n−1)/2 pairings and need n−1 rounds for a complete rotation — three rounds at four players, seven at eight, eleven at twelve.
What is the best round robin schedule for 8 padel players?
Seven rounds on two courts, arranged so each player partners each of the others exactly once and faces each of them exactly twice. The table on this page does both, which most published eight-player schedules do not: they guarantee partner variety only, leaving opponents uneven. Seven rounds at 24 rally points takes about 100 minutes.
How do you run a round robin with 5 padel players?
Use the five-round schedule where each player sits out exactly once: 1+2 vs 3+4, then 1+3 vs 2+5, 1+5 vs 2+4, 1+4 vs 3+5, and 2+3 vs 4+5. That covers all ten possible pairings once, gives everyone four matches and one rest, and needs about 90 minutes with short sets.
Is americano the same as a round robin?
Almost. Americano is an individual round robin — everyone partners everyone once — with a specific scoring system layered on: every rally is worth a point, matches run to a fixed total, and points are credited to individuals. You can run the same rotation with ordinary games and sets, which is usually the better choice for a small regular group.
How long does a padel round robin take?
Count the rounds, then multiply by the round length and add a warm-up. At 16 rally points a round is roughly 10 minutes including the changeover, at 24 points about 13, and at one set to six about 26. So eight players over seven rounds is 90 minutes at 16 points and just over 100 at 24.