The Padel Boom: Which EU Countries Love the World's Fastest Growing Sport?

Padel this, padel that. If you've not heard of the sport padel, you may have been living under a rock. 

The world's fastest growing sport has been booming in recent years, with interest in padel increasing tenfold in some countries since 2020. A recquet based sport, it's sort of a mishmash of tennis, sqaush and badminton - and equally as fun, evidently. 

Even some of the world's biggest athletes like Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham and Rafael Nadal (I wonder if he's any good?) have taken up the sport. It's popularity is showing no signs of slowing down. Get this, you can even bet on pro events at some bookmakers and casinos sites. 

Get this, padel is growing so fast we even designed our own custom padel rackets, and we're giving 50 away to our readers!

• Click here to enter the giveaway for a free padel in the United Kingdom
• Click here to enter the giveaway for a free padel in Ireland
• Click here to enter the giveaway for a free padel in italy

With that in mind we wanted to find out exactly where in Europe padel is growing the fastest. 

We took several metrics into account including extrapolated search volumes, padel courts per capita and search growth over the last five years to find out which is Europe's most 'padel-obsessed' countries. 

When it comes to overall interest in padel, Sweden leads the way in Europe based on extrapolated search volumes—adjusting for population differences. While around 22,000 people in Sweden search for padel each month, that number jumps to 230,000 when factoring in population size.

However, despite historically high interest, Sweden has seen the steepest decline in padel enthusiasm over the last five years, with a -18.1% drop. It seems Swedes were ahead of the curve, but now that padel has become "cool," their interest has waned.

Other countries with exceptionally high search volumes and extrapolated interest in 2025 include Finland, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain.

Serbia, meanwhile, has experienced an explosive 5900% growth in searches over the past five years—the highest in Europe. Unfortunately, Serbians face a major obstacle: they only have one padel court for every 140,000 people.

Spain and Italy stand out for both high search interest and an abundance of courts. Spain boasts around 15,000 courts, while Italy has approximately 9,100. This translates to one court per 3,100 people in Spain, whereas Italians share one court for every 6,600 people.

Sweden, despite its cooling enthusiasm, has the best court-to-population ratio, with one court per 2,400 people—perhaps a sign that they've had their fill of the sport.

In the UK, padel interest has surged tenfold over the last five years. In 2020, only 3,600 people searched for padel each month; by 2025, that number has skyrocketed 1025% to 40,500. Ireland has seen a similar trend, with searches rising 646% from 590 in 2020 to 4,400 in 2025.

Unfortunately for padel fans in the UK and Ireland, court availability lags behind demand. In the UK, there's just one court per 126,000 people, while in Ireland, it’s even worse—one per 230,000.

If I were a betting man, I'd wager that more padel courts will open in the UK and Ireland in the coming years. If I were a businessman, I’d open one myself. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m the former.

Methodology 

We measured the following metrics to gauge interest in 19 countries across the EU. We collected and recorded the following statistics: 

• Search Interest (Google Trends)
• Search Volume (Feb 2020)
• Search Volume (Feb 2025)
• 5 Year Search Growth
• Extrapolated Search Volume (the search volume from each country is all populations were equal)
• Number of padel courts 
• People per court

Sources

• What is Padel? The world's fastest growing sport
• The rise of padel and why it's so popular
• Number of padel courts worldwide in 2024, by country
• Padellands.com
• European Countries by population (2025)
• Semrush (search volume metrics)
• Google Trends