World Padel League returns to Mumbai for biggest season yet

The World Padel League is moving Season 4 to the Dome, SVP Stadium in Mumbai from August 12 to 16, and the scale is bigger on every front: 36 of the world’s leading padel players, six franchise teams and a setting the league is using to signal a step up in ambition. Licensed and managed by Iconik Sports and Events Ltd., the competition is positioning Mumbai as the place where padel’s Indian growth story is turning into a premium live property.

The event listing backs up that pitch with concrete detail. Tickets start at 1,499, the schedule runs across five days, and the card is built around 11 matches featuring names such as Sanyo, Jon Sanz, Jorge Nieto, Fran Guerrero, Bea Gonzalez and Paula Josemaria. For fans, it is a fuller stadium product than the league’s earlier India stops, with the Dome replacing the NESCO Centre used for the 2025 edition.

The franchise structure is also getting deeper. The six teams are Vedanta Leopards, Khan Tigers, Panorama Panthers, Aussie Mavericks Jaguars, Game Changers Lions and VB Realty Cheetahs, a line-up that shows the league is building identity around owners and rivalries rather than treating the event as a one-off exhibition. WPL says it launched in Dubai in 2023, brought a second season to Mumbai and then expanded from four to six franchises in Season 3, which welcomed 36 top international athletes and marquee brand partners.

That expansion is landing in a market that is changing fast. The India Padel Report 2026 by Hudle and CAA Portas projects the country’s padel market rising from roughly US$25 million to US$30 million today to as much as US$250 million to US$300 million by 2036, while participation is said to have jumped from 500 to 1,000 players in 2022 to nearly 100,000 in 2025. Mahesh Bhupathi said, “Every season of the World Padel League has reinforced padel’s growing momentum in India,” and the wider backdrop is just as strong: the International Padel Federation said in 2025 that global participation had topped 35 million players, with clubs, courts and federation membership all still climbing.