Roland-Garros to host Padel Festival with tennis stars exhibition

Roland-Garros will open to the general public on Sunday, September 6, with the French Tennis Federation using the first day of the Alpine Paris Major 2026 to turn padel into a full-stadium spectacle. The Padel Festival is built as an entry point for casual fans, with introductory sessions, open play, exhibitions and celebrity appearances wrapped around the launch of the tournament week.

The centerpiece lands on Philippe-Chatrier, where a Team Tennis versus Team Padel exhibition will put Richard Gasquet, Arnaud Clément, Lucas Pouille and Fabrice Santoro in the same show environment against professional padel players. The ticketing page bills it as a spectacular clash between names from tennis and the padel circuit, a crossover designed to pull in supporters from both sports and give Roland-Garros a very different opening-day feel than a standard qualifying session.

The event is not built only for spectators. The FFT is also staging supervised introduction and practice sessions on the padel courts installed inside the Roland-Garros grounds, pushing the site toward a participation model instead of a pure showpiece. Tickets start at €10, the stadium opens at 11 a.m., and the federation is selling the day as family-friendly, festive and welcoming, a clear attempt to make the Major feel accessible before the elite draw takes over.

That strategy is tied to how fast padel is spreading in France. The FFT says the country had 272,000 licensed padel players in November 2025, up 130 percent from 2022, and more than 850,000 people now play the sport. The federation has also put padel near the center of its 2025-2029 priorities, and it is leaning on Roland-Garros to accelerate that growth by giving the sport the prestige of one of tennis’s most iconic venues.

The amateur side of the festival adds another layer. In the Clubs at Chatrier competition, 31 mixed pairs qualified through affiliated clubs will be joined by one professional pair in a knockout format, with €10,000 for the winners. Clubs can hold their qualifying events from June 15 to August 15, giving the federation a nationwide funnel into the same court that will host the sport’s top stars.

The timing is deliberate. The Alpine Paris Major will run from September 7 to 13, 2026, and the 2026 edition will be the fifth straight year at Roland-Garros. After the 2025 tournament drew 62,128 spectators overall, including 27,000 across the weekend and more than 25,000 for the semifinals and finals, the FFT is betting that padel can keep growing fastest when it looks less like a niche event and more like a festival.