King of the Court is the most competitive of the common padel social formats. Everyone plays at the same time, and after each round the winners climb a court and the losers drop one. By the end of the session the strongest pairs have fought their way to court 1, and every round has felt like it mattered.
Like Americano and Mexicano, it is a club convention, not an official format. The FIP Rules of Padel govern the match itself; everything about movement, partners and the winner is decided by the organiser. Clubs run it in noticeably different ways, so this guide sets out the common core and then the variants.
The basic rule: winners up, losers down
Courts are ranked, with court 1 at the top. Each round, every court plays one match at the same time. When the round ends:
- Winners move up one court. Winners on court 1 stay to defend it.
- Losers move down one court. Losers on the bottom court stay there, or go to the bench if pairs are waiting.
This is the shared core across the club rules we looked at. The Champion of the Court rules put it as “If you win, you both move up 1 court” and “If you lose, you both move down 1 court”. Forever Padel in Maidstone describes “a fun Social format where winners move up a court and losers move down after each round”. Padel Browser says the same.
Movement in practice
Take 6 pairs, A to F, on 3 courts. In round 1 the winners are A, C and E.
| Court | Round 1 | Result | Round 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Court 1 | A v B | A wins | A (stayed) v C (up from court 2) |
| Court 2 | C v D | C wins | B (down from court 1) v E (up from court 3) |
| Court 3 | E v F | E wins | D (down from court 2) v F (stayed) |
Every court except the top and bottom gets one pair from above and one from below. After two or three rounds the courts sort themselves roughly by padel level, which is why King of the Court works well when you do not know everyone’s level in advance.
Fixed pairs or switching partners
This is the biggest difference between clubs.
Fixed pairs. You keep the same partner all session and climb or fall together. Blue Zone Courts runs its King of the Court this way, with “Set teams (partners remain the same for the entire program)”, 16 players, 4 courts and a 2-hour session. It suits pairs who train together and want a proper test.
Switching partners. Pairs split when they move, so you play with someone new on each court. Forever Padel’s listing says that when courts finish, “winners go up and split pairings to play against eachother, losers go down and also split pairings”. The Champion of the Court rules switch partners with the players who end up on your court in the next round. This version keeps the social side of an Americano while adding the ladder.
In Bandeja you choose either mode. With switching partners, pairs arriving on a court split up and re-pair with the players they meet there.
Bench rotation for extra pairs
You will not always have exactly four players per court. When there are more pairs than places, the extra pairs wait on a bench:
- Before round 1, the extra pairs form a queue.
- After each round, the losers on the bottom court go to the back of the queue instead of staying.
- The first pair in the queue comes on in their place.
- Everything above the bottom court moves as normal.
With 10 pairs on 4 courts, for example, 2 pairs wait at any time. A pair that loses on the bottom court joins the back of the queue and sits out two rounds, so even the bottom match has something riding on it, and nobody waits for long.
Scoring choices
Match length
Clubs keep King of the Court matches short so that rounds turn over quickly:
| Club or source | Match format |
|---|---|
| Padel Browser | One game to 7 points, golden point on deuce, 6 to 10 rounds |
| Forever Padel Maidstone | 10-point tiebreak, 60-minute session |
| Champion of the Court | 3 matches of 30 minutes per pool |
| Blue Zone Courts | Short matches across a 2-hour session |
Golden point is defined in the FIP rules as a deciding point played at deuce, with the receiving pair choosing which side receives. Bandeja uses points per match instead: 16, 21, 24 or 32 points, or time-based rounds.
Draws
A draw is awkward in a format where someone has to move. Matches to 16, 24 or 32 total points can end level, for example 12–12. A 21-point match cannot, so it is the simplest choice for King of the Court. If you do use an even total, Bandeja counts a drawn match for the pair already on that court.
Who is the champion
Here the clubs genuinely disagree:
- Last pair standing on court 1. Forever Padel crowns “whoever wins the last round on the top court”, and Champion of the Court crowns the winners of the final round on court 1.
- Most time on the top court. Padel Browser suggests whoever spent the most rounds on the king court.
- Most wins. A table of wins across the session rewards consistency rather than one good last match.
Bandeja keeps a full table either way, and you can rank by wins first rather than by points, which suits King of the Court because the ladder is about winning matches, not margins. Announce which rule decides the champion before round 1.
Starting positions
For round 1 you can draw pairs at random or seed them by padel level, strongest on court 1. Random is fairer if levels are unknown and the ladder sorts it out within a few rounds. Seeding gets competitive matches from the start, but a pair seeded too low has to win several times to reach the top.
When to use King of the Court
King of the Court works best when:
- The group is competitive and wants every match to count.
- Players are of uneven padel level and you want them sorted without a public ranking exercise.
- You have at least 2 courts, ideally 3 or 4. With one court there is nowhere to move.
- People are happy to play in short bursts with quick changeovers.
It works less well for complete beginners, who can spend most of the session on the bottom court, or for groups where the point of the evening is to partner everyone. For those, an Americano is the better fit. If you want something between the two, a Mexicano also sorts players by form but rotates partners within each group.
How long it takes
There is no fixed number of rounds, so King of the Court fits whatever booking you have. As a rule of thumb, Bandeja assumes about 0.6 minutes per point plus 2 minutes for the changeover:
| Points per match | Minutes per round | Rounds in 90 minutes | Rounds in 120 minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | about 12 | 7 | 10 |
| 21 | about 15 | 6 | 8 |
| 24 | about 16 | 5 | 7 |
Eight rounds of 16 points take about 96 minutes, which leaves time for a warm-up and the final announcement in a two-hour booking. Bounce puts typical padel socials at 60 to 120 minutes, and notes that in King of the Court partners may stay together or rotate depending on the club.
Running it with Bandeja
Enter the players or pairs, pick the number of courts, choose fixed pairs or switching partners, and set points per match or a round length. After each round, Bandeja moves winners up and losers down, rotates the bench and updates the standings. In live mode each court has a QR code, players submit their own score with a 4-digit PIN and you approve it, and the TV page shows the current courts and standings full screen. For the logistics around the event, see how to organise a padel tournament.