Registration opens for 2026 Winona Lake Sunset Pickleball Tournament
Registration is open for the Sept. 11-13 Winona Lake Sunset Pickleball Tournament, and last year’s full field hints spots may go fast.
Registration opened June 10 for a tournament that filled completely last year, a clear sign that Winona Lake’s late-summer pickleball weekend is already in demand. The 2026 Winona Lake Sunset Pickleball Tournament will be held Sept. 11-13 at the Winona Lake Pickleball Courts on Park Avenue, and organizers are again expecting a strong turnout.
The field will stretch across senior divisions, open-age brackets, singles and multiple skill levels, giving the event a broad draw instead of a narrow, invitation-only feel. Players who sign up by Aug. 10 will receive a tournament T-shirt, and the weekend will also include a raffle and daily food trucks, turning the competition into a three-day gathering built around more than just match results.
Weather should be less of a gamble than it is for many regional events. If conditions force a move indoors, tournament play will shift to the newly remodeled Grace College Recreation Center, a backup that gives the event a level of certainty not every outdoor pickleball tournament can promise. For players chasing measurable results, that matters too: matches will be reported to DUPR, which says it now has more than 1 million rated pickleball players and tracks tournament results directly into player profiles.
The event also carries a fundraising mission that reaches well beyond the courts. All net proceeds will benefit World Compassion Network, and organizers said the tournament is the organization’s largest fundraiser of the year. Winona Lake itself has become part of the appeal, with its lake, shops, greenway, food and surrounding community helping make the tournament a destination as much as a competition.
This year’s event continues a stretch that began with the first local charity pickleball tournament on the new Winona Lake courts on Sept. 9, 2023. The tournament returned in 2024 and 2025, with the 2025 field also filling completely, and that kind of repeat demand is the strongest signal yet that the local appetite for pickleball is still rising. Grace College has also announced plans for eight new pickleball courts adjacent to its fieldhouse, adding more momentum to a recreation scene that keeps expanding in Kosciusko County.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
