The International Padel Federation (FIP) put a revised rulebook into force on 1 January 2026, and three of the changes land directly on the situations amateur players argue about most: how to serve correctly, how a game at deuce actually ends, and what happens when someone drops their racket. This piece goes deep on exactly those three points, plus doubles service order — ground a general introduction to padel's rules doesn't have room to cover.
Serve trajectory now matters more than where the ball lands
Through the end of 2025, officiating focused mostly on where the ball touched down at the serve. The rulebook that took effect in 2026 shifts attention to the ball's path before impact: if it crosses the service line, or its imaginary extension, before the racket strikes it, the serve is a fault regardless of where it would have landed. Many players had gotten used to nudging the ball forward before striking it, sometimes past the centre line, without it being called consistently — the new rule closes exactly that gap, stated as an effort to simplify officiating rather than to change the serving motion itself.
In exchange, the foot rule got looser. The ban on striking the ball above waist height is unchanged, but now only one of the server's feet needs to be touching the ground or positioned behind the service line at the moment of contact — the other foot can be lifted or advanced.
A serve that clips the net: the let rule
When a serve clips the net or the post and then lands correctly in the opposite service box, that's a "let," and the serve is replayed with no penalty. The condition is that the ball must not touch the surrounding metal fence before its second bounce — if it does, it's an ordinary service fault like any other.
The detail amateur players miss most often: a let doesn't reset the attempt count. If it happens on a first serve, the server keeps both of their normal attempts. If it happens on a second serve, only that second serve is replayed — it doesn't go back to two.
Beyond the let, the basic mechanic is the one inherited from tennis: a fault on the first serve costs nothing, since the server still has a second attempt. A fault on that second serve as well is a double fault — the point is lost outright, with the ball never coming back into play. That's why a double fault stings more than any other lost point: it happens without the opponent ever touching the ball.
20 seconds between points, now timed
FIP has always allowed a maximum of 20 seconds between the end of one point and the start of the next serve, but from 2026 enforcement in officiated matches got much stricter — the clock starts the moment the previous point ends, not when players signal they're ready. Going over the limit brings a warning first, then a point penalty.
Changing ends gets 90 seconds, and the break between sets gets 120. In a friendly match between mates, the strict clock almost never gets enforced — it mainly matters in organized leagues and tournaments, where an official is actually watching the time.
Deuce at 40-40: three systems, and the club decides
At 40-40, padel officially recognizes three ways to settle a game, and which one applies depends on the competition or on what the players agree — it isn't universal:
- Classic advantage — win two points in a row and take the game, with no cap on how many times deuce repeats. The system inherited from tennis, and the longest.
- Golden point — the next point wins the game outright, no advantage. Fast, but many players find it abrupt.
- Star Point — the addition that took effect in 2026. Advantage is played out twice (deuce, advantage, deuce, advantage, deuce), and on the third deuce a single decisive point is played that closes the game. It's a deliberate middle ground between the other two.
On the Star Point, the receiving pair chooses which side of the court they'll return the decisive ball from, and can't switch that choice at the last second. In mixed doubles, the decisive point must be played man against man or woman against woman.
Star Point is mandatory only in FIP-run competitions — Premier Padel and the CUPRA FIP Tour, plus the FIP Promises and FIP Beyond circuits. At club level or in a friendly match, any of the three systems is valid — it's worth agreeing on one before the match starts, the same way you'd agree on how long a half lasts before a five-a-side game on artificial turf.
A dropped racket loses the point on the spot
Every padel racket is played on a safety cord strapped to the player's wrist — mandatory for both players on a pair. Since 2026, if a player drops their racket or the cord snaps during a live point, the point goes to the opposing pair immediately. No warning, no replay.
The rule closes an old grey area: an accidentally dropped racket used to spark arguments constantly, because it was rarely clear whether the player had already made a valid shot before it slipped out of their hand.
Doubles service order
Before the first game, a coin toss — or a racket spin — decides who chooses first. The winning pair can choose to serve, to receive, or which side of the court to start on, and the other pair gets whatever is left.
Within a pair, one player serves an entire game, and their partner takes over on the team's next service game — the switch never happens mid-game. That order stays fixed for the whole set and can only be rearranged at the start of the next one. Between the two pairs, the right to serve alternates every game, exactly as in tennis.
Sporta MD currently covers football, basketball, volleyball, and tennis — there are no padel courts in the app. This piece exists because padel's rules are moving fast — three changes in a single year — while the sport keeps growing steadily in Chișinău. The International Padel Federation (FIP) was founded in Madrid in 1991 by the Argentine, Spanish, and Uruguayan padel federations, and today counts around a hundred national federations across all five continents — it's the body that writes and updates the rulebook covered above.