Vietnam youth pickleball stars face key Ho Chi Minh City test
More than 300 juniors will take on The Global City as Vietnam's biggest youth pickleball test shifts to Ho Chi Minh City. The prize is a real pipeline, not just a showcase.
Vietnam's youth pickleball pipeline gets its clearest exam yet in Ho Chi Minh City, where more than 300 junior players will be asked to prove that the sport's boom can produce real talent, not just busy brackets. The Vit Nam Pickleball Open Cup - Future Stars 2026 will stage its southern stop from June 12 to 14 at New Sports Club’s The Global City venue, and the point of the event is bigger than a weekend title chase: it is meant to identify the next wave of players emerging from southern Vietnam.
The competition is built like a development tournament, not a one-age novelty act. Boys and girls will compete in singles and doubles across U10, U12, U14, U16 and U18 divisions, giving the event a broad talent map and a chance to spot players who can be pushed into higher-level training. A Vietnamese sports ministry report said the Ho Chi Minh City stage was officially launched on June 8, underscoring the institutional push behind a tournament that New Sports is running with Thiu niên Tin phong và Nhi đng and with Pharmacity as title sponsor.
The venue matters almost as much as the field. The Global City site has three clusters, 11 covered courts and three indoor courts, a setup that gives young players a championship-style backdrop rather than a casual club setting. It is the same complex that hosted PPA Tour Asia’s MB Vietnam Open 2025 from September 4 to 7, when 354 amateur and professional players from across the region and beyond competed there. For Vietnam's juniors, that history raises the standard: this stop is being played where regional pickleball already has scale and credibility.
That is why this Ho Chi Minh City leg carries such weight for the country. The Future Stars series was first announced in Hanoi on December 24, 2025, and the inaugural leg was planned for January 3 and 4 at Happyland Pickleball in Long Biên, Hanoi, with livestream coverage promised on VTV Prime, YouTube and the event's official fanpage. Organizers said the debut would gather more than 300 athletes, and Vietnamese state sports coverage later described the two-day Hanoi finish as having left a positive mark on pickleball development in Vietnam.
The question now is whether the southern stop can do more than fill courts. If The Global City produces a deeper roster of recognizable young names, Vietnam will be moving closer to a real junior pathway, one that can feed the wider Asian scene and eventually put Vietnamese players among the sport's next familiar names.
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