Da Nang, Vietnam, hosts the third official edition of the national teams pickleball world championship from August 30 to September 6, the first to be held in Asia.
From August 30 to September 6, the beautiful Vietnamese city of Da Nang will host the Pickleball World Cup 2026, the world championship for national pickleball teams. It is the third official edition of the tournament and the first held in Asia. With the draw now completed by the organizers, the groups for the competition’s five national team categories have been set.
A tournament of unprecedented scale
According to figures from the organizers, the championship will bring together more than 5,000 players from 81 countries and territories.
The event combines two competitions. The main one is the national team tournament, in which each nation can enter teams in five divisions. There are 156 teams entered in total:
- Open, no age limit: 64 teams.
- Senior, for players 50 and older: 40 teams.
- Masters, for players 60 and older: 20 teams.
- Junior, for players up to 18: 16 teams.
- Kids, for players up to 14: 16 teams.
Running alongside it is an individual open tournament, with more than 160 categories organized by age and skill level, ranging from 3.0 to 5.0, plus professional divisions.
The Open category groups
The main division brings together 64 national teams divided into 16 groups of four teams each:
- Group A: Vietnam, Colombia, Cayman Islands, and Chile.
- Group B: United States, Samoa, Iran, and Bolivia.
- Group C: Hong Kong (China), Mexico, Tanzania, and Kazakhstan.
- Group D: Portugal, China, Indonesia, and Slovenia.
- Group E: Brazil, Malaysia, Jamaica, and Uruguay.
- Group F: Australia, Belgium, Kenya, and Nepal.
- Group G: Germany, Italy, Chinese Taipei, and Macau (China).
- Group H: England, Pakistan, Greece, and Saudi Arabia.
- Group I: Philippines, Lithuania, Argentina, and Armenia.
- Group J: France, South Korea, Croatia, and Cambodia.
- Group K: Bulgaria, Peru, Singapore, and Bonaire.
- Group L: Netherlands, New Zealand, Neutral Individual Athletes, and Northern Mariana Islands.
- Group M: India, Czech Republic, Israel, and Antigua and Barbuda.
- Group N: Canada, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Laos.
- Group O: Japan, Thailand, Ukraine, and Cook Islands.
- Group P: Spain, South Africa, Belize, and Aruba.
Vietnam, as host nation, leads Group A, where it will face Colombia, the Cayman Islands, and Chile. The United States, champion of the 2025 edition, opens its campaign in Group B against Samoa, Iran, and Bolivia.
Competition format
Each group is played in a round-robin format, so each national team faces the other three in its group. Each matchup between two countries consists of six matches: men’s doubles, women’s doubles, two mixed doubles, men’s singles, and women’s singles. The national team that wins more matches is declared the winner of each tie.
The top two teams from each group advance to the final stage. From there, matchups are played under single elimination: whoever loses is out, and whoever wins keeps advancing until the champion is decided.
Rosters must include at least two men and two women, and the rules allow only one professional player per team.
Venues
The competition is spread across seven venues in the city. The main one is the Tien Son Sports Palace, and the rest are the Tuyen Son sports complex and the Trang Hoang, FitFun, Papi, Hop Thanh, and Truong Son clubs. The opening ceremony will take place on September 2 at 5:30 PM local time, at Tien Son.
The choice of Da Nang has concrete precedents. The city was the first in Vietnam to establish a local pickleball federation, in March 2025. That same year, on October 4, the Tien Son Sports Palace drew a crowd of 7,906 spectators for the final day of the PPA Tour Asia’s MB Vietnam Cup. That figure was recorded by Guinness World Records as the largest attendance ever for a pickleball event.
Prizes and trophy
The Pickleball World Cup 2026 is distributing a prize pool of 500,000 dollars. The Vietnamese edition is also debuting a new trophy that will be based in Da Nang. The national team that wins it in five consecutive editions will keep it permanently.
Tournament history
The Pickleball World Cup had a precursor event in Lima in 2023. The first official edition was held in the same city in 2024, with more than thirty delegations. In 2025 the tournament moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where 68 delegations took part and the United States took the title. With the Da Nang edition, the championship reaches Asia for the first time.
The roster detail comes from the Northern Mariana Islands federation, cited by the Marianas Variety newspaper. According to that report, teams must have at least two men and two women, and only one professional player per team is allowed.
