Dumaguete hosts record P1 million pickleball open, 720 players compete

Dumaguete has stepped into the center of Philippine pickleball with the PlanOut Pickleball Open 2026, a three-day event that drew more than 720 players and enthusiasts across four venues and 22 courts. With a P1 million prize pool, the largest in the country to date, the tournament has turned Riverside Courts, FKS Gym, Loops and Burn Room into one citywide showcase for a sport that is spreading fast beyond its early strongholds.

The scale matters as much as the entry list. The open runs from May 1 to 3 and spans mixed doubles, doubles genderless, men’s doubles and women’s doubles, with novice, intermediate and advanced divisions giving the event a laddered structure instead of a single elite bracket. That breadth signals a maturing circuit in the Philippines, where pickleball is no longer just a weekend hobby but a tournament ecosystem with room for beginners, regular competitors and advanced players under one banner.

PlanOut also made the Dumaguete stop notable for how it handled the event itself. The tournament is the first in the Philippines to use a paperless, app-based registration and entry system, a shift that ties the competition to the launch of PlanOut V2. Earlier registration timelines had already pointed to the company’s push for a smoother rollout, with official registration opening on April 11 at 1:00 p.m. through the app, while the platform launch in Dumaguete was set for 11:11 a.m. the same day.

For PlanOut CEO Kim Joseph Llena, the open is not just a tournament but a live test of whether the city can support a larger sports operation. He described it as a “stress test” for how a major event could work in Dumaguete and said the city could become the country’s “pickleball hub.” He also pointed to the depth already present in Dumaguete and Negros Oriental, with players, coaches and courts in place but no big-scale tournament until now.

The business case is hard to miss. Local reporting said the P1 million purse is well above the roughly P700,000 prize levels seen in recent major local events, a jump that raises the competitive stakes and the city’s profile at the same time. Organizers said the event is meant to strengthen Dumaguete’s position in the Philippine pickleball scene and support sports tourism, the kind that fills hotels, moves food and transport spending, and keeps visitors in town for multi-day stays.

A celebrity exhibition game scheduled for May 3 adds another layer to that reach, with Beauty Gonzales, Diana Zubiri, Eric Fructuoso and Jeffrey Tam set to appear. In a sport still building its mass audience, that crossover matters: Dumaguete is not just hosting games, it is trying to make pickleball a reason to travel.