How Is Padel Scored?

Padel borrows its point ladder straight from tennis. Within a single game the score climbs in fixed steps rather than by one: the first point won is 15, the second 30, the third 40, and the fourth wins the game. A score of zero is called love. The server's score is always announced first, so "30–15" means the serving pair has 30 and the receiving pair has 15.

To win a game outright, a pair normally needs four points with a two-point cushion. When both pairs reach three points each, the score is 40–40, called deuce — and this is where padel splits. The FIP rulebook offers three deuce formats, and the one in use has to be agreed before the match starts.

Since the 2026 season the professional answer is the Star Point, covered in the next section. The other two are the classic advantage rule, where a pair must win two points in a row from deuce, and the golden point, where a single sudden-death point at 40–40 settles the game.

Because points move in blocks of 15/30/40, a game is short and self-contained. Losing the game while you are serving is called being broken, and a break is the real currency of a padel set — because the underhand serve gives the server little advantage, breaks are more common than in tennis, so a single break often decides the set, and the serving pair's real edge comes from seizing the net, not the serve.

The Star Point is the deuce format padel's professional circuits have played since 1 January 2026. From the first deuce a pair may take advantage twice; if both advantages are lost, the next point is a single deciding point that wins the game outright. The FIP General Assembly — 100 national federations — approved it unanimously in Acapulco on 28 November 2025.

The mechanism runs in three stages, exactly as the FIP set them out. First advantage: the pair that wins the point after deuce holds advantage; convert it and the game is theirs, lose it and the score returns to 40–40. Second advantage: the same again — convert and the game is won, lose it and play moves to the Star Point. Star Point: one decisive point, and its winner takes the game.

That caps a game at five points after the first deuce — advantage, back to deuce, advantage, back to deuce, deciding point. Under the classic advantage rule there is no cap at all, which is how a single padel game used to run past ten minutes and wreck a broadcast schedule.

On the deciding point the receiving pair chooses which side receives the serve — the deuce court (right) or the advantage court (left). The serving pair cannot dictate it. It is the same provision that has always governed the golden point, and it hands the returners one tactical decision to offset the server's edge at the moment that matters.

The Star Point applies across Premier Padel, the CUPRA FIP Tour, FIP Promises and the amateur FIP Beyond circuit. It was first played at the FIP Bronze Melbourne (5–11 January 2026), the opening stage of the CUPRA FIP Tour, and made its Premier Padel debut at the Riyadh P1 (9–14 February 2026). Every Premier Padel event of the 2026 season, up to the Alpine Paris Major at Roland-Garros finishing on 13 September 2026, has been played under it.

The golden point — punto de oro in Spanish — removes advantage altogether: at 40–40 the very next point is sudden death and decides the whole game. The receiving pair chooses which side takes it. It remains one of the three deuce formats in the FIP rulebook, so any club, league or tournament may still select it.

What changed in 2026 is its status, not its mechanics. The World Padel Tour adopted the golden point in 2020, and it was the professional standard through the tour's absorption into Premier Padel in 2024 and across the 2025 season. From 1 January 2026 the Star Point replaced it on every FIP-sanctioned circuit.

The golden point survives where speed matters more than margin: club nights, americano and mexicano formats, and any event that has to finish a full draw inside one evening on a fixed number of courts. One point per deuce makes match length almost perfectly predictable, which is exactly what a court-booking schedule needs.

Its weakness is the reason the FIP moved on. A single point at 40–40 leaves no room to recover from one unlucky bounce or one mis-hit smash, and players and coaches argued through the 2025 consultation that it put too much of a tight game on one rally. The Star Point keeps the ceiling on game length while giving each pair two genuine chances to close the game out first.

A set is won by the first pair to reach 6 games with a margin of at least two games. So 6–4 or 6–3 closes the set, but 6–5 does not — the set continues. If the leading pair pushes on to 7–5, they win the set; if the trailing pair levels it at 6–6, the set goes to a tiebreak (covered in the next section).

A match is best of 3 sets: the first pair to win two sets wins the match. A straight-sets win reads 2–0; if the sets are split 1–1, a deciding third set is played. Most competitive padel, including Premier Padel, uses this best-of-three format.

Putting the pieces together, the hierarchy is simple: points build a game, games build a set, sets decide the match. Four points win a game outright, and under the Star Point a game can run to at most eleven; six games (win by two) win a set; two sets win the match. Every level above the point ladder carries the same win-by-two logic, resolved by a tiebreak once a set reaches 6–6.

When a set reaches 6–6, it is decided by a tiebreak — a special game played to 7 points, and you must still win by two. Here the score is counted in plain numbers (1, 2, 3 …), not 15/30/40. The Star Point does not apply inside a tiebreak; the two-point margin stands.

How the tiebreak runs:

• The player whose turn it is to serve opens with one point from the right (deuce) court.
• Serve then passes to the opposing pair, and from there each side serves two points in turn — every two points the serve changes hands.
• The pairs switch ends after every six points to keep conditions fair.
• The first pair to 7 points with a two-point lead wins the tiebreak, and takes the set 7–6.

If the tiebreak reaches 6–6, it keeps going until one pair is two points clear — 8–6, 9–7, and so on. There is no cap. A tiebreak set counts as a normal set in the best-of-three match, so winning it puts a pair one set from victory, or levels the match at one set each.

Padel is played two-vs-two on an enclosed court measuring 20 m long by 10 m wide, framed by glass and metal-mesh walls. Two features make its scoring feel different from tennis: the underhand serve and the walls in play.

The serve. The server stands behind the service line, bounces the ball once on the ground, and strikes it underhand at or below waist height, sending it diagonally into the opponent's service box. As in tennis, the server gets two attempts — a first and a second serve — and two faults in a row is a double fault that hands the point to the returners. On the serve the ball must first bounce inside the correct box; if it then strikes the wire mesh it is a fault, whereas glancing the glass after that bounce is legal.

The walls. During a rally the ball may be played off your own walls after it has bounced once on your floor — this is what keeps padel rallies long and tactical. But a shot that flies directly into the opponents' wall before bouncing on their court is out, and the point is lost. Learning to read a ball off the back glass to dig out deep shots is a core padel skill.

Padel's governing body is the International Padel Federation (FIP), and its leading professional circuit is Premier Padel (launched 2022, which absorbed the World Padel Tour from the 2024 season). Their rules define the scoring described throughout this guide.

You don't need a paper scoresheet to run a padel match. JudgeMate gives you a free, real-time live scoreboard built for a single match — one phone acts as the admin, and spectators follow along on any screen through a shareable link or QR code.

The scoreboard mirrors the structure this guide describes: it tracks points climbing to games, and games building to sets, with best-of-3 logic built in. At deuce you choose between the golden point and the classic advantage rule, and you can switch the tiebreak at 6–6 on or off. The Star Point's two-advantage cap is not yet a board preset, so an event playing it runs the board on advantage and the umpire calls the deciding point.

Where the board stops: it keeps the score of one live match. It does not log advanced statistics, review video, or make line calls — padel points are decided on court by the players and officials, and the board reflects the agreed result.

A whole tournament is a different tool on the same platform. An event category runs americano, mexicano, round robin, knockout or groups plus knockout, takes pair entries from a public page, puts matches on courts at set times, and keeps a standings table that updates as results are confirmed.

Start on the padel sport page or open the live scoreboard directly. To go deeper, read the padel referee guide for the officiating basics and the padel live scoreboard guide for a step-by-step setup.