History of Padel in Romania

A seaside introduction

Padel's story in Romania starts not in a stadium but on a beach. In 2013, a demonstration on the sand at Mamaia gave the public its first look at the sport, and the response was immediate enough that clubs began opening the same year, first in Bucharest and soon after in Timișoara, Cluj-Napoca and other large cities. For a sport invented decades earlier in Mexico and grown into a national pastime in Spain, Romania was a late but enthusiastic adopter.

Grassroots energy before professional structure

The years that followed were about building a following rather than a competitive ladder. In 2016, four amateur players, Adrian Vodislav, Adrian Barbu, Gabi Moraru and Dan Lazar, spent twenty-five straight hours on court at a Bucharest club attempting the world record for the longest padel match, raising money for Save the Children Romania along the way. The mark has since been broken several times over by players elsewhere in Europe, but the attempt said something about how quickly the sport had found a committed local following barely three years after arriving.

Competitive structure followed. Bucharest hosted the first national padel tournament in 2017, and by 2019 a proper domestic series, the Național Padel Tour Romania, was running stops in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Timișoara. These remained amateur and semi-professional affairs: Romania had courts and clubs, but no presence yet on any international ranking circuit.

A federation, an academy, and the push toward the professional game

The Romanian Padel Federation, led by president Lucian Perescu, became the body responsible for organizing the national game and, eventually, for bringing international competition to the country. On the club side, January 2025 brought a symbolic step: the Năstase și Marica Sports Club in Bucharest launched Padel One, described as the first dedicated padel academy in Romania, with co-founder Ciprian Marica framing its goal as developing players capable of competing internationally rather than simply serving recreational demand.

Romania joins the FIP calendar

The breakthrough came in 2025, when the International Padel Federation (FIP) sanctioned a Silver-category event at the Padel Center in Dumbrăvița, near Timișoara — the first FIP tournament ever played in Romania, and the first anywhere in the Balkans or Eastern Europe. The event returned in May 2026 as FIP Silver Timișoara, drawing players from close to twenty countries and a visit from FIP competition director José María Íñigo, who described Romania as the hub of padel in Eastern Europe and suggested Romanian players could break into the world's top 100 within a few years.

Five months later, Bucharest went a level further. FIP Gold Bucharest, staged at the Năstase și Marica Sports Club in September 2026, carried a €50,000 purse and FIP ranking points to match — the seventh Gold event of the season on the international calendar, and, by FIP's own description, the biggest tournament in Romanian padel history. Local pairs received wildcards into the draw, a first chance for Romanian players to test themselves against the sport's touring professionals on home courts.

Where the sport stands now

Professional results have yet to catch up with the infrastructure. 24 Romanian players now carry a FIP ranking, and the field is led by a clear distance by Alice Radu, a former competitive tennis player who crossed over to padel in late 2023 and has become the only Romanian name to push into the lower reaches of the world's top tier. The rest of the national group is still earning its first ranking points at home and at nearby regional events, a pattern consistent with a sport still only a few years into professional competition. What is no longer in doubt is that Romania now has a fixture on the international calendar, a national federation organizing it, and, for the first time, a generation of players with a professional academy built specifically to produce them.