Pickleball April 2026: 2 FFT tournaments not to miss in France

French pickleball is entering its mature phase. Since the French Tennis Federation (FFT) officially took over the pickleball delegation at the start of 2026, sanctioned tournaments have been multiplying across the country and the competitive calendar is starting to look like that of a fully structured sport. In April, two key dates will rhythm the French season : the Finistère departmental pickleball championship, organised by the FFT 29 committee together with local clubs including Pickleball Finistère Sud, and the 2026 Easter Open hosted by the Pickleball Paris Ouest club, in the greater Paris area. Here is everything you need to know to register, prepare, or simply come and see the level rise.

Finistère departmental pickleball championship: two weekends, three clubs

The Finistère departmental tennis committee is hosting its first real departmental pickleball championship in April 2026, with a format designed to cover the whole territory. The committee has split the qualifying phases into two geographic hubs : players from the south of the department face off at TC Bénodet on 18 and 19 April 2026, while those from the north meet at TC Landerneau (Suzanne-Lenglen hall, Plouédern) on 25 and 26 April 2026. The winners of each pool then meet for the final phase at TC Briec, on 6 and 7 June 2026.

Categories, format and level of play

The championship is open to players aged 16 and over. Three brackets are on offer, in line with the now well-established competitive format in France : women's doubles, men's doubles and mixed doubles. Matches are played in two winning sets to 11 points, with a mandatory two-point gap to close a set, just like on the international DUPR circuit. Pool play is followed by a knockout phase, ensuring that every team plays multiple matches over the weekend regardless of their early results.

Pricing, registration and contact

The entry fee is set at a deliberately accessible €10 per pair, designed to encourage participation from new players. Registration forms must be sent by email to comite.finistere@fft.fr, before the 10 April 2026 deadline. Logistically, the three clubs (Bénodet, Landerneau and Briec) are well-equipped FFT venues, with indoor wood or resin floors and several courts laid out. For southern Finistère players, the Bénodet event sits inside the broader Béno'Mix multi-racket weekend, now a fixture of the club's calendar. And for the north, this is the very first pickleball tournament ever held in Plouédern — an unmissable event for the Brittany pickleball scene.

2026 Easter Open: the Pickleball Paris Ouest rendezvous

While Finistère is buzzing, the Paris region is not standing still. The Pickleball Paris Ouest club, based in Vaucresson and chaired by Jean-Pierre Berger (one of the historic figures of French pickleball development), is hosting its 2026 Easter Open on 25 and 26 April 2026 in Ville d'Avray (92). It is the spring rendezvous of the western Paris pickleball community : Vaucresson, Saint-Cloud, Louveciennes, Meudon, but also players coming from central Paris and the Yvelines, who enjoy a green setting easily reachable by suburban train to play their first official spring matches.

Three brackets and a DUPR ranking

Unlike Finistère, which focuses on doubles, the Easter Open offers a complete format with singles, doubles and mixed doubles. Matches are organised based on the DUPR ranking (Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating), now a global standard, so that everyone plays opponents of comparable level. For players who do not yet have a DUPR rating, the club accepts unrated entries — an excellent gateway for those who have just stepped out of their first club sessions and want to take the leap into competition.

Registration and atmosphere

Registration for the Easter Open is handled via the official platform of the association on HelloAsso, which allows you to pay your entry online and receive instant confirmation. The atmosphere is famously friendly, a hallmark of the club : coffee breaks, exchanges between members and a Sunday-evening prize ceremony are part of the weekend. For players already looking ahead to the rest of the season, this is also the perfect chance to warm up for the big Skechers Pickleball Paris Open 2026, taking place in Montreuil from 22 to 24 May, which will gather more than 360 players from around 30 countries.

Why these two tournaments matter on the European calendar

Having two major weekends in April, one in Brittany and one in the Paris area, says a lot about how French pickleball is evolving. Just two years ago, almost all French competitions were held under the historic Pickleball France association and concentrated in a handful of isolated hubs. Today, driven by the FFT delegation, departmental committees are building a real pipeline, from local clubs all the way up to sanctioned championships. The Finistère championship embodies this new territorial momentum : the sport is no longer powered only by big metropolises, but also by mid-sized towns like Bénodet, Landerneau or Briec, which are investing in the discipline.

The Pickleball Paris Ouest Easter Open, on its side, fits into the tradition of historic club tournaments that form the backbone of European pickleball. They are the ones surfacing new talent, retaining players, and building local communities. The FFT announced in January 2026 that it intends to rely primarily on this club network to take France from a few thousand current licence holders to more than 50,000 by 2028. It is in this context that fixtures like the 2026 Winter Pickleball Open or the official stops of the league circuit at Viriat Tennis Club have proven that France now relies on a solid and engaged audience.

How to prepare for these two weekends

To play in the best conditions, two elements are non-negotiable. First, the 2026 FFT licence : whether it is the multi-racket licence or the pickleball-only licence, it is mandatory to register for any sanctioned tournament — including the Finistère championship and the Easter Open. If you are not licensed yet, your home club can guide you, or in some cases issue a one-day licence. Second, an up-to-date DUPR ID, which makes it possible to seed you correctly and record your results on the international circuit.

On the equipment side, do not wait until the last minute. A competition pickleball paddle is nothing like an introductory paddle : it must offer a generous sweet spot, a responsive carbon face and a precise grip to handle dinks in the kitchen as well as drives from the baseline. That is exactly the profile of our Foundation Paddle, T700 carbon pickleball paddle, designed for players from motivated beginner up to DUPR 4.0 — typically the kind of player you will find at the departmental championship or at the Easter Open. For attire, plan indoor tennis shoes adapted to wood or resin floors, plus a few balls for warm-up outside the courts.

The future is being written in France, this very spring

With these two tournaments, April 2026 lays the groundwork for a French season that promises to be historic. In Bénodet, Landerneau and Ville d'Avray, hundreds of players will be able to test their game, validate their progress and push their DUPR rating. They will also be hundreds of opportunities, for local media and new players coming as spectators, to discover a sport that no longer looks at all like a passing fad. The FFT structuring, the multiplication of clubs and the arrival of sanctioned competitions are sketching a clear trajectory : in five years, pickleball could be to France what padel was a decade ago. Whether or not you sign up for one of these two events, watch them carefully : the future of French pickleball is being shaped right now, this spring.