What nobody mentions when they’re evangelising padel to you: finding courts is the easy part. Courts are everywhere now, the booking apps work fine, and most venues have decent availability midweek. The hard part is finding three other people at roughly your level who are free at the same time and keen to play.
This is the bit that catches a lot of new players. You get hooked after your first few sessions. You want to play more. And then you realise that your two friends who came with you are either not as keen, or work different hours, or keep flaking. Suddenly you need a strategy.
Here is one.
Playtomic: start here
If you haven’t downloaded Playtomic yet, do that first. It’s the most widely used booking and community platform for padel in the UK, which means it’s where the players are.
The feature you want is Open Matches. Instead of booking a court and filling it yourself, you join (or create) a public game that other players can also join. The host books the court, you chip in for your share of the cost, and you show up.
How to use it:
- Download the app and create an account. You’ll be assigned a level – the system is called Playtomic Level and runs on a scale from 0 to 7, with 7 the highest. Don’t overthink your starting level; it adjusts.
- Search for Open Matches near you. Filter by date, time, and level range.
- Join a game. You pay your share of the court fee through the app.
The quirks worth knowing: the level system can be uneven, especially outside London, where there are fewer players and the ratings haven’t had as much calibration time. You might join a “level 2.0–2.5” match and find one person who’s significantly better than advertised. This is normal and will smooth out as you play more rated games. Don’t let it put you off – most hosts are honest about what they’re looking for.
If you’re in a city with reasonable coverage, Open Matches should get you regular games with new people within a couple of weeks.
The social ladder
Most established padel clubs run a social ladder – a rotating league format where you play regular matches against other members, results get recorded, and your position in the ladder shifts based on how you do. It sounds more formal than it is. The full guide to how social ladders work covers the formats, the mechanics, and how to use one to build a regular group.
In practice, a social ladder match is just two pairs playing a set, recording the score somewhere (often on a whiteboard, a club app, or via Playtomic’s Competitions tab), and having a brief chat about it afterwards. There’s no referee. Nobody is watching. The intimidation factor is close to zero.
Why bother? Because it solves your problem structurally. Once you’re on the ladder, you have a ready-made list of players at a similar level who are members at the same club, actively looking for games. You message them, arrange a time, play. That’s your regular group, right there.
Many clubs charge a small registration fee. Some run them termly, some run them year-round. Ask at reception or check the club’s website or social channels for details. The entry point is usually low: you don’t need to be good, you just need to show up consistently.
One practical note: when you play a ladder match with someone you get on with, ask if they want to play again outside the ladder. That is how you build a regular group. The ladder is the introduction mechanism – the actual relationships happen from there.
WhatsApp groups: the real infrastructure
Here’s something that doesn’t get written about much: the actual day-to-day organisation of social padel in the UK runs through WhatsApp groups. Almost every active padel club has one. Some clubs have several, split by level or by day-of-week preference. These groups are where games get arranged, where someone posts “anyone free Thursday evening?”, where a fourth drops out and a replacement gets found in fifteen minutes.
Getting into these groups is usually a matter of asking. Go to reception, or drop the club a message on Instagram, and say you’re looking to play more regularly – is there a WhatsApp group you can join? In most cases they’ll add you the same day.
Some clubs and organisations have taken this a step further. Cambridge University Sport, for example, runs padel WhatsApp communities grouped by playing level, which helps if you’re worried about being outclassed. Worth checking for similar setups at clubs near you.
The one thing to watch: WhatsApp groups can be quiet if the club is small or the group is new. A group with five people isn’t very useful. If you join a dead group, ask at reception whether there’s a more active one, or whether they know of any regular social sessions you can attend to meet people in person.
Facebook and Instagram
A few communities worth knowing:
Padel Social Club (Instagram: @padelsocialclub) regularly posts about social sessions and community events, primarily in London. If you’re in the capital and looking for organised social play, it’s worth following.
Social Sports Society runs padel events across several UK cities alongside other social sports – good if you want an organised introduction to new playing partners without the commitment of a club membership.
PadelBrowser has a community groups directory (padelbrowser.com/players/groups) listing padel WhatsApp groups. Its coverage is patchy and not UK-specific, but it is worth a look if you’re outside London.
Reddit’s r/padeltennis is international and leans Spanish/Argentine, but the UK-specific threads occasionally surface useful local knowledge – particularly for major cities.
If you’re not in a padel hub
This is where we have to be honest. If you’re in a city with one court and a small membership base, the options above work less well. You can’t have a thriving Playtomic Open Matches scene with 40 registered players. The WhatsApp group has 12 people in it. The ladder doesn’t exist yet.
In this situation, a few things help:
Go to every social session the club runs. If the venue offers any kind of organised group session – beginner nights, coaching clinics, club nights – attend them. These are your best chance of meeting other players at your level, because you’re all in the same place at the same time with a reason to talk.
Tell people you’re looking to play. This sounds obvious but it works. After a session, mention to whoever you’ve been playing with that you’re trying to find a regular group. Most people are in exactly the same position and relieved someone said it out loud.
Be the one who organises. If there’s no WhatsApp group, ask the club if they’ll help you start one. If there’s no social session, ask if they’d be willing to host one. Clubs generally want their courts full – if you’re the person who helps make that happen, they’ll usually support you.
If there’s nowhere to play near you at all, you’re waiting for the sport to catch up with you – but it’s catching up fast. The LTA counted 1,825 courts across 551 venues in Britain in May 2026, up from 870 courts at the end of 2024. The coverage gaps are closing. If you’re in a city that’s well-served, the Manchester padel guide and Birmingham padel guide are useful starting points for finding clubs that run active social programmes.
Building a regular group
The goal, ultimately, is not to rely on any one of these channels – it’s to build a WhatsApp group of your own: six to eight people at a roughly similar level who like each other and want to play regularly. Every method above is a way to find those people. Once you’ve got regular opponents, it’s also worth knowing how to choose the right club if you haven’t already committed to one.
Playtomic gets you the first reps. The ladder introduces you to the regulars. The club WhatsApp group is where the coordination happens. The Facebook and Instagram communities fill in the gaps.
Give it two or three months of actively using these tools, and the “finding three people to play with” problem tends to solve itself. You’ll have more people wanting to play than slots in your diary.
That’s the realistic guide. It’s a bit of effort at the start, but the network compounds quickly once it gets going.