Who runs pickleball, told from each side.

USA Pickleball

USA Pickleball describes itself, in the front of its 2026 rulebook, as the National Governing Body of American pickleball: it writes and interprets the rules, and its rules decisions are final. It says it published the sport's first official rulebook in March 1984.

Its founding, two ways

• Wikipedia says the body was founded in 1984 in Tacoma, Washington, as the United States Amateur Pickleball Association, that a new corporation, the USA Pickleball Association (USAPA), was formed in 2005, and that the name USA Pickleball was adopted in 2020. USA Pickleball's own history page could not be opened to check this.
• HistoryLink calls the body formed in 1984 the USA Pickleball Association.

Its headquarters is also given two ways: Wikipedia says Surprise, Arizona; the 2026 Change Document prints a USA Pickleball postal address in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Size, as USA Pickleball claims it

The report does not define a member or explain the fall from 2023. Wikipedia gives a different figure, 104,828 members as of January 2025. The same 2024 report claims 142 sanctioned tournaments that year, including the National Championships and 13 Golden Ticket events.

The professional tours

The PPA Tour, Major League Pickleball and the UPA

The PPA Tour, which runs individual events, and Major League Pickleball (MLP), which runs team events, merged under one parent company in early 2024, keeping their own brands and formats with a combined calendar (Sportcal, 1 March 2024). Trade press names the parent the United Pickleball Association (UPA).

The UPA-A

On 16 May 2024 the UPA announced a new governing body, the UPA-A (expanded as United Pickleball Association of America by The Dink and as United Pickleball Association of Americas by Pickleball.com, a UPA-affiliated outlet), led by Jason Aspes, to replace USA Pickleball as the governing body for its events. The Dink reported that it cited the need for a nimble body and for paddle regulation. According to a March 2025 report in The Dink, the arrangement in practice is that the UPA-A governs professional play on the PPA Tour and MLP, while USA Pickleball sets the standards for amateur and recreational play. The UPA-A sets its own paddle standard and keeps its own list; see pickleball paddles and approval.

The APP Tour

The APP Tour (Association of Pickleball Players) is described by KCTV5 (26 August 2025) as the first professional tour sanctioned by USA Pickleball, with singles, doubles and mixed play and 12 national stops.

Who governs: each side

The question is not settled. The Dink has recorded each position:

• USA Pickleball: at a March 2025 industry panel, its representative Carl Schmits said there is only one national governing body, and that the two paddle standards are technically close and should merge.
• UPA-A: at the same panel its president, Jason Aspes, said independence matters to the UPA-A while acknowledging that it falls under the UPA in ownership terms, that it is responsible only for professional play (which explains the separate standard), and that the two standards are close enough to unify. No agreement was reached.
• APP Tour: when the UPA-A was announced in May 2024, the APP backed USA Pickleball as an independent body and criticised a single commercial entity trying to own the sport.

Separately, trade press reports litigation over paddle certification between the parent company of the paddle maker JOOLA and USA Pickleball, filed on 12 June 2024, with a USA Pickleball counterclaim in April 2025. No outcome is recorded here.

The international federations

As The Dink (21 November 2025) sets out the sequence:

1. An International Federation of Pickleball (IFP) was founded in 2010 and later became defunct.
2. The World Pickleball Federation (WPF) started in 2018.
3. The IFP was revived as the IPF in April 2023.
4. The Global Pickleball Federation (GPF) was founded in November 2023, after the United States, Canada, Australia and others withdrew from the IPF.
5. The IPF and the WPF merged in June 2025 (reported date 14 June 2025).
6. The GPF and the merged body set up a Unification Committee, which met on 8 November 2025. The GPF's secretary general called unification by July 2026 a realistic aspirational goal.

On 4 August 2026 unification was not complete. The European Pickleball Federation (created 31 May 2023 in Luxembourg, with 38 member countries by its own count) announced that it had been accepted as a Continental Member of the WPF. The GPF said its rules require exclusive affiliation before the EPF's application to it could go ahead. The GPF claims to represent about 95 per cent of pickleball members worldwide, a claim seen in search summaries. Whether unification has happened since August 2026 was not established for this page.

Why one international federation matters for the Olympics is on the Olympic and Paralympic programme page. How the PPA ranks its players is on rankings explained.