Asia Open Pickleball Championship draws nearly 1,000 entries from 15 countries
Nearly 1,000 players from 15 countries filled the Asia Open field in Ho Chi Minh City, a sharp sign of pickleball's regional reach.
Registration closed for the Asia Open Pickleball Championship 2026 with nearly 1,000 entries from 15 countries, giving the Ho Chi Minh City stop one of the deepest fields in Asian pickleball this year. AFP said the event at Swin Premium Pickleball carried a prize pool of more than US$55,000 and was framed as the sport’s official return in Asia.
The size of the entry list mattered as much as the prize money. AFP’s draw-size post listed 32 entries each in men’s singles, women’s doubles, men’s doubles and mixed doubles, along with 24 in women’s singles, the kind of spread that forces a tournament to function as a full-scale continental showcase rather than a single-division event. That breadth also showed why a championship in Ho Chi Minh City could attract players from 15 countries, turning one venue into a meeting point for clubs and competitors treating Asian events as destination tournaments.
AFP, the Asia Federation of Pickleball, describes itself as a non-profit organization promoting and integrating pickleball across Asia. The federation says it now has 18 member organizations and an estimated 70,000 players in member countries, numbers that help explain how quickly an event like the Asia Open could scale from a regional gathering into a central stop on the calendar.
The federation’s tournament pipeline is widening as well. Its listing for the Asia Pickleball Junior Open 2026 shows the event in Bangkok, Thailand, from July 28-30, with registration opening June 1 and closing June 30. Taken together, the open championship in Ho Chi Minh City and the junior event in Bangkok point to a growing circuit built to keep players moving across borders, age groups and skill levels. The next marker on that calendar arrives in Bangkok.
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?
