The United States remains the undisputed home of pickleball, and the numbers leave little room for argument. The latest 2026 Topline Participation Report from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association puts the total at 24.3 million American players in 2025, a 22.8 percent jump from the year before and a staggering 171.8 percent increase over just three years.
The SFIA didn’t mince words about what that means, calling pickleball the dominant multi-year growth leader across every sport it tracks. Within that figure sits a meaningful split too: casual players, those picking up a paddle between one and seven times a year, reached 16.8 million, while core players logging eight or more sessions annually climbed to 7.48 million—proof that America’s boom isn’t just curiosity, but genuine commitment.
Beyond American shores, though, the growth story looks rather different. New data from DUPR, tracking participation across the past 12 months, shows a set of countries growing at rates America simply can’t match anymore—not because the US is slowing down, but because these markets are starting from a much smaller base and rocketing upward. Here’s the full top ten, counted down from tenth to first.
10. Vietnam — 110%
Vietnam sits at the bottom of this particular list only because its base was already enormous to begin with. Separate research from UPA Asia and YouGov found that 88 percent of Vietnamese people are aware of pickleball, with 37 percent playing regularly—figures that translate to more than 16 million frequent players in the country alone. Even a “slow” year of growth here still adds serious numbers to the sport’s global tally.
9. Malaysia — 120%
Malaysia has quietly become one of pickleball’s most important markets outside North America, ranking third globally in total DUPR users behind only the United States and Canada—more than any country outside North America can claim. Kuala Lumpur itself ranks second among cities worldwide by DUPR users, trailing only pickleball-mad Austin, Texas. High-profile competitions like the Leapmotor APP Asia Penang Open 2026 and the upcoming Leapmotor Kuala Lumpur Cup 2026 are testament to the sport’s meteoric rise in this emerging Southeast Asian nation.
8. Singapore — 153%
Singapore’s growth reflects a broader pattern across Southeast Asia’s wealthier, more urbanised markets, where court access and disposable income have combined to turn pickleball into a genuine social fixture rather than a passing trend. The recently held Leapmotor Singapore Open 2026 proves the pickleball boom in the Lion City is truly happening.
7. South Korea — 159%
South Korea has been one of the standout stories on DUPR’s platform more broadly, having previously ranked as the single fastest-growing country for new DUPR users over a recent 12-month stretch. It’s a run that’s clearly continued into this year’s figures. This rise is no doubt being aided by the burgeoning court culture in the country that is seeing courts sprout all around cities, like those in Seoul Forests.
6. Thailand — 170%
Thailand’s rise sits alongside India’s as one of the clearest examples of pickleball taking hold in a country with a large, active population and an existing culture built around racquet sports. Testaments to this growing pickleball landscape are the different high-level tournaments the country has hosted over the past couple of years, including the Siam Pickleball Tournament 2025 presented by Skechers and the WPC Asia Pickleball Open Powered by Wine Connection, both in 2025.
5. Japan — 170%
Japan’s growth comes at an organisationally significant moment for the sport there—the country’s two leading governing bodies merged into a single entity, Pickleball Japan, in April 2026, giving the country’s rapid rise a more unified structure to grow from. The structures are coming in droves for sure, and they are finding homes not only in open spaces but even in hotel, shopping centres, and other similar establishments. And, just last month, Japan opened its largest pickleball centre in Shizuoka.
4. India — 182%
India’s trajectory might be the most dramatic on this list in pure infrastructure terms. The country went from having almost no pickleball infrastructure in 2016 to hosting a World Championship by 2024, compressing what would typically be decades of development into less than a decade.
3. China — 183%
China’s growth is being actively engineered from the top down, with government-backed fitness initiatives reportedly targeting 100 million pickleball players nationwide by 2030—a target that, if hit, would dwarf every other market on this list combined. Curiously, China has found an ally of sorts in the US, as the two countries are continuing an inspiring brand of pickleball diplomacy. The latest of this partnership is happening at the moment: students from Iowa embarking on an eight-day tour of China to play friendly pickleball matches against Chinese counterparts in Beijing, the coastal city of Qingdao, and Hebi in central Henan Province
2. Indonesia — 405%
Indonesia’s leap into the 400s marks a clear break from the rest of the pack, reflecting the same pattern playing out across much of Asia: a huge, young, urbanising population discovering a sport that requires comparatively little space or equipment to get started.
1. Philippines — 1,213%
Nothing else on this list comes remotely close to the Philippines’ growth rate. A 1,213 percent increase in DUPR users over 12 months reflects a genuine explosion rather than steady growth—one visible in the country’s own rapid build-out of professional infrastructure, from new franchise leagues to purpose-built venues, all racing to keep pace with a player base that’s grown faster than almost anywhere else on Earth.
The Bigger Picture
Taken together, the list confirms what a 2025 UPA Asia and YouGov study already suggested: roughly 812 million people across Asia have played pickleball at least once, with around 282 million playing monthly—numbers that dwarf the sport’s American base even as the US remains, for now, the single country with the most dedicated players. Whether that gap holds through the rest of the decade may depend entirely on how long countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and China can sustain growth rates the United States achieved only once, during pickleball’s original pandemic-era boom.
