Padel Rules: The Complete Plain-English Guide
Quick Answer: Padel is doubles racket sport played on a 20m x 10m enclosed court where the glass walls are in play. You score it like tennis — 15, 30, 40, game — and take a set by winning six games. You serve underhand after bouncing the ball, and the ball must hit the floor before it touches any wall.
You can learn padel in one booking. That is most of its appeal: four people who have never held a padel racket can play a real, competitive point within about ten minutes, which almost never happens in tennis. The rules that matter fit on one page, and the ones that cause arguments — the walls, the fence, the serve — are the ones nobody explains properly.
So here they are properly. Everything below follows the International Padel Federation's Rules of Padel, in the edition that took effect on 1 January 2026, translated out of rulebook language and into what you actually say to each other on court.
This page is the orientation. When you want the numbered rules themselves — the fault lists, the point-lost table, the time limits — the complete padel rules reference sets them out rule by rule. If you have never played, what actually happens the first time you play padel walks the evening from the front door to the last point.
What padel is, in one paragraph
Two against two, on a court enclosed by glass and metal mesh, with a net across the middle. You hit the ball over the net; the other pair has to return it before it bounces twice. The difference from every other racket sport is that the cage counts: once the ball has bounced on your floor, you can let it rebound off your own glass and play it from there. Points do not end when the ball reaches the back wall. They end when someone actually cannot get it back.
Padel is played almost entirely as doubles. A singles version exists on a narrower court, but the sport you will be booking is 2v2 — four players, one court, an hour and a half. If only two of you can make it, what you can actually do with two players is worth reading before you book.
The sport also has a formally adapted version with its own rulebook: wheelchair and adapted padel runs on the same court with two bounces instead of one, and the FIP governs its championships.
The court, and which surfaces are in play
A standard padel court is 20 meters long and 10 meters wide, with the net across the middle at 0.88m in the center, rising to 0.92m at the posts. On each side, a service line runs across the court 6.95m from the net, and a center line splits that area into two service boxes. Those are the only markings you need to know.
The enclosure is the interesting part:
- The back walls are glass, 3m high, with a further 1m of metal mesh above them — 4m of wall behind you in total.
- The side walls are part glass, part mesh, stepping down from the back corners towards the net.
- The mesh (the fence) is not the same as the glass, and the rules treat it differently. Remember that; it settles half the arguments in amateur padel.
Glass gives a clean, predictable bounce. Mesh does not — it kills the ball and sends it out at an angle nobody planned. That physical difference is exactly why the rulebook is stricter about the fence than about the glass, and every fence case, one by one is where the awkward ones get settled.
Every measurement on this page — the wall heights, the two legal side layouts, the mesh aperture, the ball and racket limits — comes from the rulebook's own spec sheet, laid out in padel court dimensions and markings.
Scoring: 15, 30, 40, and what happens at 40-40
Padel borrowed tennis's scoring wholesale. Win a point and you go from 0 to 15, then 30, then 40, then the game. Win six games with a two-game lead and you take the set. At 6-6 you play a tie-break to seven points, again by a margin of two — who serves it, when you change ends and why it can finish 9-7 are all in padel tie-break rules. Matches are best of three sets.
The only genuinely moving part is 40-40. From 2026 the FIP rulebook recognizes three ways to settle it, and your club, your league or your group picks one:
| At 40-40 | How it runs | Where you will meet it |
|---|---|---|
| Classic advantage | Win two points in a row from deuce, however long that takes | Traditional club play, casual matches |
| Star Point | Deuce, advantage, deuce, advantage, then a third deuce decided by one point | The official 2026 format on the Premier Padel and CUPRA FIP Tour circuits |
| Golden point | The first deuce is settled by a single point, immediately | Widely used in amateur competitions and many club leagues |
In both sudden-death forms — Star Point and golden point — the receiving pair chooses which side takes the deciding serve. That is a real tactical decision, not a formality: you put your better returner in front of the serve that matters. The golden point has the history behind the rule and what the receiver's choice is actually worth.
Decide which one you are playing before the first serve, out loud. Most groups play golden point because it keeps a booking inside its hour — and it is the single biggest lever on how long a padel match lasts. If you want the full walk-through of the ladder, the deuce options and how sets actually end, read padel scoring explained.
The serve: underhand, bounced, diagonal
The serve is where new players get called for faults they do not understand. The rules are simple, they are just unfamiliar. The full fault list is in padel serve rules, and if you want the reason the sport went underhand in the first place — a 1969 court with a wall behind the server — why padel serves are underhand has it.
You stand behind the service line, on the correct side. You bounce the ball on the floor once. You strike it at or below waist height. It has to land in the service box diagonally opposite. You get two attempts, and a second fault loses the point.
Three details the 2026 edition tightened up:
- One foot behind the service line is enough — the previous wording required both.
- The ball may not cross the service line before you strike it. No stepping the bounce forward to buy an angle.
- The 20-second limit between points is actively enforced, and the warm-up is three minutes rather than five.
Then the part that surprises everyone. Your serve has landed in the correct box, and the ball carries on into the back glass — that is a perfectly good serve, and the receiver plays it off the glass. But if it carries into the metal mesh instead, it is a fault, even though it landed in the right box. Glass is fine. Fence is not. Same with a net clip: if the ball touches the net and still lands in the right box, it is a let and you serve again — every let situation covers the rest, including the ones that are not lets at all.
Who serves next, and which side each of you receives from, is fixed for the whole set once the first game starts. Serving order and sides is the two-minute read that stops the most common argument in social padel: somebody serving out of turn and nobody being sure what to do about it.
In, out, and the fence
Here is the single rule the whole sport hangs on:
The ball must bounce on the floor of the receiving side before it touches any wall or fence on that side.
Get that one, and almost every dispute resolves itself. The corner cases that survive it — balls that clip a fitting, balls that go out through a side opening, balls that come back in — are worked through in padel in or out.
- Your shot goes over the net and hits their back glass before it hits their floor: out. Their point.
- Your shot bounces on their floor and then rockets into their back glass: in play. They can wait for it and hit it after the rebound. That is normal padel, not a lucky escape.
- The ball bounces on your floor, comes off your back glass, and you smash it into your own glass to send it back over the net: legal, and occasionally the only shot available.
- The ball bounces on your floor and then hits your own metal fence: still in play. Under FIP rules the mesh counts as part of the court, so the rebound is legal — and nearly unplayable, because mesh returns the ball at an angle nobody can read. What loses the point is a ball you hit that touches your own fence.
- The ball leaves the court over the fence, or hits any fitting outside the cage: out.
- On courts with openings at the sides, you may run out of the court and play the ball back in around the post — the shot known as por tres. It is legal, it is spectacular, and it is almost always a bad idea.
Two bounces on your floor ends the rally. So does hitting the ball into the net, or hitting it twice, or a player touching the net.
Those last three are the ones that get argued about at amateur level, usually loudly and usually by someone who is wrong. The twelve rule arguments every crew has settles each of them against the numbered rule, so you can look it up instead of voting on it.
What makes padel different from tennis and pickleball
The three sports get lumped together and they are not close relatives. The long version, spec for spec, is padel vs pickleball vs tennis.
| Padel | Tennis | Pickleball | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Court | 20m x 10m, enclosed by glass and mesh | 23.77m x 10.97m, open | 13.4m x 6.1m, open |
| Walls in play | Yes, after the floor bounce | No | No |
| Serve | Underhand, bounced first | Overhead, no bounce | Underhand, below the waist |
| Racket | Solid, perforated, no strings | Strung | Solid paddle |
| Ball | Slightly lower pressure than a tennis ball | Tennis ball | Perforated plastic |
| Scoring | 15/30/40, sets | 15/30/40, sets | Points to 11, win by 2 |
| Usually played as | Doubles | Singles or doubles | Singles or doubles |
The practical differences follow from the walls. Power is worth less in padel, because the cage gives your opponents a second chance at everything you hit hard. Placement and patience are worth much more. Rallies are longer, the net is where matches are won, and a lob is a genuine weapon rather than a defensive shrug.
If you come from tennis, your serve is the thing to unlearn and your volleys are the thing to lean on — what transfers from tennis, and what does not is written for exactly that first hour. If you come from pickleball, the court will feel enormous for about fifteen minutes, and then the glass will start ruining your best shots.
The related question — is padel easier than tennis — has an honest answer that is yes for the first month, no after that, and the reason is the walls.
Starting as a group of four
Four is the number. Padel is the rare sport where the ideal group size is exactly the number of friends who will reliably answer a message.
- Book 90 minutes for your first outing. An hour is enough once everyone knows what they are doing; it is not enough while you are still learning where to stand.
- Rent rackets at the club the first time. Padel rackets vary a lot in shape and weight, and you cannot tell which suits you until you have hit for an hour.
- Split the pairs by feel, not by ego. Put the two least experienced players with the two most experienced ones, one each side. Nobody enjoys 6-0.
- Swap partners between matches. Four players make three different pairings, and playing all three is the fastest way to find out who actually works together.
- Agree the deuce rule and the match length first. Golden point and one set to six fits comfortably in an hour with time to talk.
- Put one phone on the bench keeping score. The online padel scoreboard runs the whole match — 15/30/40, your deuce rule, tie-breaks, change-of-ends prompts — and nobody has to remember whether it was 30-15 or 15-30. If you would rather not have a phone on court at all, print the padel score sheet and take a pen.
Balls last longer than you think for casual play — a fresh set every three or four sessions is plenty until you start hitting hard enough to notice. If you are in the UK, the LTA's padel rules summary is a good second read alongside the FIP text.
Two more things worth having open on your phone that first night. The padel glossary explains why half the sport is in Spanish and what a bandeja actually is, and why padel got this popular has the 2026 court and player numbers if you want to know what you have joined.
Keeping score of who is actually best
One honest note to finish on, because it is the thing every regular group runs into.
Padel's scoring settles a match beautifully and settles a season not at all. After ten weeks with the same three friends you will have played maybe thirty matches across every combination of partners, and nobody will agree on what any of it meant. Whoever tells the story best wins the argument in the car. The player who kept getting carried by a strong partner tends to remember an excellent run of form.
The fix is arithmetic rather than memory. A rating takes each result, asks who you beat and by how much, and prices it accordingly — beating the strongest pair moves you a long way, losing to the weakest moves you a long way back. Run one night's result through the padel Elo calculator and you can see exactly how it works, including why the favorites gain almost nothing for a win everyone expected.
That is the whole reason we built Rivals: the same math, kept automatically for a crew of four, with every rating change explained. But you do not need an app to start. You need four people, one court, and an agreement about what happens at 40-40.
FAQ
Can you play padel with two players?
Yes, but it is a different game. Singles padel is played on a narrower court, and on a standard doubles court two players simply cannot cover the space, so rallies turn into a fitness test. Most clubs only build doubles courts, and almost all social and competitive padel is 2v2. If two of you turn up, hit for practice rather than trying to play a real match.
Is the ball out if it hits the fence?
It depends whose side and when. If your shot hits any part of the opponents' wall or fence before it bounces on their floor, you have lost the point. If it bounces on their floor first and then hits their glass, the rally continues and they can play the rebound. They may even play it off their own mesh once it has bounced — the fence counts as part of the court. What they cannot do is hit the ball into their own fence.
How long does a padel match last?
A best-of-three-sets match usually runs 60 to 90 minutes. Most casual bookings are 60 or 90 minutes and groups fit whatever they can into that, often one or two sets rather than a full match. Playing golden point at 40-40 rather than advantage shortens a set noticeably, which is why so many clubs default to it.
Do you have to serve diagonally in padel?
Yes. The serve must land in the service box diagonally opposite you, exactly as in tennis, and you serve from behind your own service line with the ball bounced once on the floor first. You get two attempts. A serve that lands in the correct box and then hits the back glass is good; one that lands in the box and then hits the metal fence is a fault.