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Padel Rules Explained: A Complete Beginner's Guide
Padel looks simple from the sideline. Four players, a small glass box, a ball that keeps coming back off the walls. Then you play your first match, someone calls a ball out, and you have no idea why.
Plenty of people are having that experience right now. Britain alone passed one million padel players in May 2026, up from 15,000 in 2019.
Here is the short version. Padel is always doubles. You serve underarm, below the waist, after bouncing the ball. The walls are part of the game. The scoring comes straight from tennis.
That covers most of it. The rest — the fence, the door, where you're allowed to stand, what happens at 40-40 — is where club arguments start. This guide walks through the padel rules the way the International Padel Federation actually writes them, and flags the ones almost everybody gets wrong.
The one rule that explains most of padel
Learn this one before anything else. It comes in two halves.
Anything you hit over the net has to land on their floor before it touches their glass or fence. A smash that slams straight into the back glass, or sails over the wall without bouncing in first, loses you the point.
On your own side, once the ball has bounced on the floor, every surface is in play. Back glass, side glass, fence, all three in a row — the ball is still live. You just have to return it before it lands on the floor a second time. Walls never reset that count. The second floor bounce always ends the point.
So after every shot, ask one question: did it bounce in their court before it hit anything over there? If yes, play on. If no, the point is over. That single question settles most padel arguments.
Scoring, and the new Star Point
Points are counted like tennis: 15, 30, 40, game. Six games win a set with a two-game margin, 6-6 goes to a tie-break to seven, and matches are best of three.
What almost every guide misses is that the current rulebook lists three official ways to play 40-40, not two.
- Advantage. The traditional one. Win two points in a row from deuce.
- Golden point. Deuce, then a single point decides the game.
- Star Point. New for the 2026 season, and barely covered anywhere in English yet.
Star Point sits between the other two. At deuce you play an advantage. Lose it and you return to deuce. Play a second advantage. Lose that one and you reach a third deuce, and that point is the Star Point. Winner takes the game.
One detail applies to both golden point and Star Point, and it catches out experienced players constantly: the receiving pair chooses which side to take the deciding point on. Not the server. The receivers also can't swap positions to take it.
The serve, and the rules almost everyone breaks
The serve is the most-broken rule in padel. It also changed more than anything else in the 2026 rulebook, so a lot of guides are now describing it wrong.
Six things have to be true:
- One foot behind the service line, between the centre line and the side wall, and you stay there until you've hit the ball. Until 2026 the rule said both feet, so if you were taught that version, it's been relaxed.
- You bounce the ball on the floor first, inside your own service box. The ball can't cross the service line before you strike it — which is what rules out bouncing it forward and chasing it.
- Your feet don't touch the service line or the imaginary centre line.
- You strike the ball at or below waist height.
- At least one foot stays in contact with the ground. No jumping.
- The ball travels diagonally into the opposite service box. Lines count as in.
Rules 4 and 5 are the ones club players break without noticing, largely because referees at the top level let a lot slide and the habit works its way down.
Then there's the receiver. The return of serve has to bounce first — you can't volley it. That's the only shot in padel with that restriction, and it's the first thing tennis converts get wrong.
Glass versus fence: what's in and what's out
This is the rule people argue about most, and every guide seems to have half of it. Here is the full picture, straight from the rulebook.
| Situation | Ruling |
|---|---|
| Serve lands in the box, then hits the glass | Good serve |
| Serve lands in the box, then hits the metal fence | Fault |
| Rally ball bounces in their court, then hits the fence or glass | Good — play on |
| You hit your own glass first, ball goes over the net | Good |
| You hit your own fence first | You lose the point |
| Your shot hits their glass or fence before bouncing | You lose the point |
The pattern is worth saying out loud. The fence is only a fault surface on the serve; during a rally it behaves exactly like the glass. But your own fence is never a helper — the glass on your side is fair game, the mesh isn't.
Two more people rarely know. A ball that bounces in and lands in the corner where wall meets floor is good. And if it bounces in, then wedges into a hole in the fence or sits on the flat top of the wall, the point goes to whoever hit it.
Where you're actually allowed to stand
This one surprises almost everybody.
Only the server has a position rule. The receiver can stand anywhere on their side of the court. So can the receiver's partner. So can the server's partner. All three of them can stand on the net if they want.
Regular players bring this up constantly, and the frustration is real. As one put it: "I've lost track of how many times I've had people tell me that both players on the receiving side need to be behind the line."
They don't. Standing back to receive is a tactical choice, not a rule. Camping on the net to receive a serve is legal — just usually a bad idea, because you still have to let the serve bounce.
Playing the ball outside the court
Yes, you really can run out the door and hit the ball back in. It's Rule 16, and it's the shot that makes padel highlight reels.
The catch is that it depends on the court, not on you. Out-of-court play is only authorised when there are two access points per side and a clear space outside — at least 3 metres wide and 4 metres long, with nothing in it. A floodlight pole in that space rules it out entirely.
That changes rulings. On a court without a safety zone, the doorway is just more fence: a serve that bounces in and shoots out through the gate is a fault, and a rally ball crossing the boundary is dead on the spot. On a court with one, the point stays alive until the second bounce.
Simpler advice: agree before you start whether you're playing out-of-court. Most clubs stack bags exactly where you'd need to run.
Rules that genuinely change from club to club
Here's something no beginner guide mentions: some of what you'll be told is a rule is really just local practice.
The core rules — serving, the walls, what counts as out — are set by the FIP and don't change. Scoring formats do. Belgium often plays a nine-game pro set. Denmark uses golden point every time. The Netherlands uses it in competition but not in friendly games. Swedish social events run on a timer. Chilean clubs with courts packed close together call the point the instant an out-of-court ball clears the wall, so nobody sprints into the next match.
None of that is anyone being wrong. It's just format, and format is negotiable in a way that the rules aren't.
While you're agreeing on format, agree on one bit of etiquette too. Don't shout "out" to your partner mid-rally — in a match, that can be read as a line call and end the point. Experienced players shout "bounce" or "leave it" instead.
The rules nobody tells beginners
A few genuine point-enders that rarely make it into guides:
- Drop your racket or snap the wrist cord and you lose the point immediately. The cord isn't a safety suggestion, it's compulsory — and this penalty is new in the 2026 rulebook.
- Touch the net, the posts, or the tension cable while the ball is live and the point is gone. Same for stepping into the opponents' court.
- If the ball hits you or your partner after your team has played it, you lose the point.
- Double hits cost you the point, but there's a nuance: the return is legal if the second contact happens in the same swing and the ball's path doesn't change much.
- You can reach over the net — but only after the ball has bounced on your side and spun back over on its own.
Common questions
Is padel always doubles?
In practice, yes. Standard courts are built 10 by 20 metres for four players — about two and a half times the footprint of a pickleball court. Singles courts exist but are rare.
Can you serve overarm in padel?
No. Both first and second serves must be underarm, struck at or below waist height, after a bounce.
Can you volley the return of serve?
No. The serve has to bounce before you hit it. Every other shot in the rally can be volleyed.
How high is the net?
0.88 metres in the middle, rising to 0.92 metres at the posts.
Is a padel ball the same as a tennis ball?
Close, but not identical. A padel ball is 6.35 to 6.77 cm across and slightly lower in pressure, so it sits up a little less. Above 1,000 metres of altitude, a different low-bounce ball is used.
What happens if the serve clips the net?
If it still lands in the correct box and doesn't touch the fence before the second bounce, it's a let and you serve again.
Is there a weight limit on padel rackets?
No. The rulebook caps length at 45.5 cm and width at 26 cm, but sets no weight limit at all — so racket weight is entirely personal preference.
The short version
Land it in before it touches anything. Serve underarm with a foot behind the line. Let the return bounce. The fence only punishes you on the serve, and only your own glass will help you. At 40-40, ask which format you're playing, because there are now three.
Everything else you'll pick up in a couple of matches. The rules are shorter than they look — it's the local habits layered on top that make padel feel complicated. When you're ready for a court, we've mapped out play padel in London to get you started.
