Premier Padel comes to Britain: inside the London P1 at Olympia
The world tour has finally landed on British soil. What's happened so far at the London P1, how our wildcards fared, and how to catch the semis and finals this weekend.
By Padel Roundup ·
It finally happened. Five years into Britain’s padel boom, the professional game arrived to see what all the fuss was about. The London P1 — the first Premier Padel event ever staged on British soil — has been running at Olympia in West Kensington all week, and by the time the finals are decided on Sunday evening, UK padel will have had its biggest shop window yet.
If you’ve been following how the professional game is organised, you’ll know what a P1 means: the second tier of Premier Padel tournament, one rung below the four Majors, carrying serious ranking points and — by padel standards — serious prize money. The world’s best pairs don’t skip P1s. Which is why, for one week in August, the best padel players on the planet are all in a 140-year-old exhibition hall in west London.
Why Olympia, and why now
The venue choice is a statement in itself. Olympia is mid-way through a £1.3 billion redevelopment, and the organisers have built a centre court of around 4,000 seats inside the Grand Hall, with outside courts, big-screen areas and the usual festival trimmings alongside. The LTA announced the event back in April, and tickets for the business end sold quickly — the tournament has been sold out from the quarter-finals onwards, even if the early rounds played to thinner crowds than the organisers would have liked.
The timing is no accident either. The LTA’s most recent figures put British padel participation at 860,000 players in 2025 — more than double the year before — spread across 1,553 courts at 559 venues. That’s the curve we charted in our piece on the UK court boom, and it’s exactly the audience a professional tour wants to get in front of. “This is what we’ve all been waiting for,” was how the LTA’s head of padel, Tom Murray, put it to The Padel Paper this week — while one industry figure went further, declaring an ambition for padel to “own August the way Wimbledon owns July”. Ambitious, certainly. But a five-year deal keeping the event at Olympia suggests nobody is treating this as a one-off experiment.
The Brits: a breakthrough week, if not a winning one
A home tournament meant home wildcards, and the LTA used them generously. British No.1 Christian Medina Murphy entered the men’s draw with his Spanish partner Alberto Garcia Jimenez; Louie Harris and Alex Loughlan, and Chris Salisbury with Alfonso Patacho, filled the other men’s wildcard slots. On the women’s side, British Nos.1 and 2 Aimee Gibson and Catherine Rose paired up, with Tia Norton entering qualifying alongside Belgium’s Helena Wyckaert, and a clutch of young Britons — including junior No.1 Ben Phillips — getting their first taste of a Premier Padel qualifying draw.
The results were about what honest observers expected, with one bright exception. Medina Murphy and Garcia Jimenez won their opening match 6-2, 6-2 on centre court on Tuesday evening — a first-ever British men’s win at a home Premier Padel event, even allowing for an opponent carrying an injury late on. “I’m so happy to win our first match here,” Medina Murphy said afterwards, “and I’m happy to show our level to the home crowd.” The run ended in the last 32 against the seeded Argentine pair Juan Tello and Maxi Arce, which is no disgrace whatsoever.
Gibson and Rose, meanwhile, gave the centre court one of its better evenings in defeat. Against the world Nos.34 and 37, Ksenia Sharifova and Alix Collombon, they lost the first set heavily, then found their level and took the second all the way to 7-5. Gibson — playing her way back from five months out with a calf injury — called the wildcard a moment that “means the world”, and on the evidence of that second set, the gap between Britain’s best and the tour’s mid-ranks is smaller than the rankings suggest. It is still a gap, though, and closing it is now the visible, measurable job the LTA’s performance programme will be judged on.
The main event: who’s still standing
With the British interest over, the weekend belongs to the tour’s heavyweights — and the 2026 season has been a genuine two-horse race at the top of the men’s game. Arturo Coello and Agustín Tapia, the world No.1 pairing, arrived in London fresh from winning in Málaga, having had their extraordinary 27-final winning streak ended in Pretoria earlier in the summer. Alejandro Galán and Federico Chingotto, who lead the season’s Race rankings, have been the form pair for much of the year. If the seedings hold, Sunday’s men’s final is the final everyone wants.
The women’s draw is just as top-heavy in quality. Gemma Triay and Delfina Brea came to London as back-to-back champions in Málaga and Pretoria and lead the women’s Race; Bea González and Paula Josemaría have three titles of their own this season. Between those two pairs, they’ve carved up most of what 2026 has offered.
One number worth sitting with: the total prize pool is €479,068, but men’s champions take home €26,000 each to the women’s €17,000 — a gap of over 50 per cent that the tour has yet to close, and which looks increasingly awkward at an event where the women’s matches have provided much of the drama.
How to watch the finale
Quarter-finals run today (Friday), semi-finals on Saturday, and both finals on Sunday 9 August. From the quarters onwards, every match streams free on Red Bull TV; earlier rounds were carried on the official Premier Padel YouTube channel, where replays and highlights are still available. In a late flurry of deal-making, coverage also landed on TNT Sports and HBO Max — the sort of mainstream broadcast attention British padel has never had before.
If you’re new to watching the professional game, the finals are the perfect entry point: notice how long the points run, how rarely a smash actually ends a rally, and how much of the game is played off the back glass — the same skills, at a rather higher level, that we covered in our guide to playing the wall. And if a weekend of watching leaves you itching to have a go yourself, here’s everything you need for a first match.
What it means
Strip away the branding and the big screens, and this week was a test: would Britain turn up for professional padel? The answer, on the evidence of a sold-out final weekend, is a qualified yes — qualified because a 4,000-seat court is modest next to the 17,000 who watched Tapia in Buenos Aires, and because the early rounds had empty seats that the organisers will want filled next year.
But next year is the point. The tour is committed to Olympia for five years. The LTA has a home stage to build its performance programme around, British players now know exactly how far away the top is, and a few hundred thousand British players have had their first chance to watch the sport’s best without booking a flight to Madrid. The boom built the courts. This week, the professional game finally came to see them.
Match results and quotes via The Padel Paper and the LTA’s tournament hub, where you’ll also find live draws and results through the weekend.
Frequently asked questions
When and where is the London Premier Padel P1?
The tournament runs from 3 to 9 August 2026 at Olympia in West Kensington, London, with qualifying on the opening days, quarter-finals on Friday 7 August, semi-finals on Saturday 8 August and both finals on Sunday 9 August.
How can I watch the London P1 from the UK?
Matches from the quarter-finals to the finals stream on Red Bull TV, with earlier rounds carried on the official Premier Padel YouTube channel. Late broadcast deals also brought coverage to TNT Sports and HBO Max.
Are any British players in the draw?
Yes. Wildcards went to British No.1 Christian Medina Murphy, Aimee Gibson and Catherine Rose in the main draws, plus Louie Harris, Alex Loughlan, Chris Salisbury and Alfonso Patacho, with more Britons in qualifying. All the British interest ended in the early rounds.
Will Premier Padel return to London?
Yes — Olympia has been secured as the host venue for five years, so the London P1 is set to become an annual fixture on the Premier Padel calendar.
What does P1 mean in Premier Padel?
P1 is the second-highest tier of Premier Padel tournament, below the four Majors. The 2026 tour has 25 events across 17 countries: four Majors, ten P1s, ten P2s and a season-ending Tour Finals.