Padel Americano is the format most clubs reach for when a group of people turns up to play but nobody has a fixed partner. You play doubles, but you compete as an individual. Partners change every round, every point you win goes into your own total, and the person with the most points at the end wins.
It is worth being clear about one thing up front: Americano is a club convention, not a federation rule. The FIP Rules of Padel and the LTA’s published rules describe the court, the serve and how a match is scored, but neither mentions Americano. What follows is the common convention as clubs and organisers run it, with the places where they differ called out.
How a padel Americano works
The basic loop is simple:
- Players sign up individually, not as pairs.
- Each round, a schedule puts four players on each court and tells them who partners whom.
- Every match is played to a fixed number of points instead of games and sets.
- When the round ends, each player adds the points their side won to their personal total.
- Partners and opponents change for the next round, and the cycle repeats.
Padel.fyi describes it as “a type of padel tournament composed of several rounds where players have a new partner and set of opponents each round”, and club listings use similar wording: Glasgow Club says you play doubles but compete as an individual. Because you keep changing partner, a strong player cannot coast on one good teammate, and a newer player gets to play alongside everyone. That is why Americano is popular for mixed-level groups and club socials.
Individual scoring
Scoring is the part that confuses first-timers. A match is played to a total number of points shared between both sides. In a 24-point match, the rally count stops when 24 points have been played, so the result might be 13–11, 15–9 or 12–12.
Each player then banks the points their side won. In a 13–11 match, both winners add 13 to their total and both losers add 11. Glasgow Club gives the same example with an 18–14 result: each player on the winning side gets 18. The Padel.fyi article puts it plainly: the winner is decided on individual points, “regardless of how well their partners performed”.
This has a useful side effect. Losing 11–13 still earns you 11 points, so every rally matters, even in a match you are not going to win.
How many points per match
There is no standard number. Padel Browser lists 16, 21 or 24 as common, Bounce mentions 16 or 24, and Padel.fyi uses 32 in its examples. Padel Park Dubai’s Playtomic listing says the target “may vary depending on the number of participants”. In Bandeja you can pick 16, 21, 24 or 32 points, or run time-based rounds instead.
A 21-point match can never end level. With 16, 24 or 32 points a draw is possible (12–12, for example), and Bandeja counts a draw as half a win in the standings.
Serving conventions
The serve itself follows normal padel rules. Under the FIP rules (Rule 6), the server bounces the ball, hits it at or below waist height with at least one foot on the ground behind the service line, and serves diagonally into the opposite box, with a second serve if the first is a fault. The LTA Padel rules page says the same in plainer language: “you must serve underarm”.
Who serves, and for how long, is where Americano differs from a normal match, because there are no games to hand the serve over. Common conventions:
| Convention | Who uses it |
|---|---|
| Serve rotates every 4 points | Padel.fyi |
| Each player or side serves 2 or 4 times, then the serve passes | Glasgow Club |
Pick one, announce it before round 1, and print it on the schedule. With four serves each in a 16-point match, all four players serve exactly once.
Rounds, players and courts
The schedule is where Americano gets mathematical. The ideal is a rotation where every pair of players partners exactly once and faces each other exactly twice. Mathematicians call this a whist tournament, and it has been known since the 1970s that one exists exactly when the number of players divided by 4 leaves a remainder of 0 or 1 (Chang, Costa, Feng and Wang; see also Julian Wiseman’s notes).
That gives two families of perfect group sizes:
- Multiples of 4 (8, 12, 16, 20, 24): with one court per four players, everyone plays every round and the full cycle takes one round fewer than the number of players.
- One more than a multiple of 4 (5, 9, 13, 17, 21): one player sits out each round, everyone sits out exactly once, and the cycle takes as many rounds as there are players.
| Players | Courts | Rounds for a full cycle | Sit-outs per player | Printable schedule |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 5 players, 1 court |
| 8 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 8 players, 2 courts |
| 8 | 1 | 14 | 7 | 8 players, 1 court |
| 9 | 2 | 9 | 1 | 9 players, 2 courts |
| 12 | 3 | 11 | 0 | 12 players, 3 courts |
| 12 | 2 | 17 | 6 | 12 players, 2 courts |
| 13 | 3 | 13 | 1 | 13 players, 3 courts |
| 16 | 4 | 15 | 0 | 16 players, 4 courts |
| 20 | 5 | 19 | 0 | 20 players, 5 courts |
With fewer courts than one per four players, the matches stay the same but spread over more rounds. Eight players produce 14 matches in a full cycle, so 2 courts need 7 rounds and 1 court needs 14. Twelve players produce 33 matches, which fills 11 rounds on 3 courts or 17 on 2 courts.
When the numbers do not divide
With 6, 7, 10, 11 or 14 players, a perfect rotation is impossible. The total number of matches in a full cycle would have to be the number of players times one less, divided by 4, and for these counts that is not a whole number. For 10 players it would be 22.5 matches.
That does not stop you playing. For these counts Bandeja builds a schedule that keeps repeat partners to a minimum and spreads sit-outs evenly, so nobody sits out twice in a row when it can be avoided. See the 10 players on 2 courts schedule for an example. The schedules index lists every combination from 4 to 24 players, plus 28 and 32.
Sit-outs and fairness
When some players sit out more than others, their totals suffer. Clubs handle this in different ways, and none of them is a rule:
- No compensation. Simple, and fair when everyone sits out the same number of times, as with 5, 9 or 13 players.
- Half the match total. A player who sits out a 24-point round gets 12 points, as if they had drawn.
- Their own average. The player gets their average score per match played so far.
Bandeja offers all three as a setting. Decide before the first round and tell the group, because changing it later always looks like favouritism.
Variants of Americano
The same rotating idea comes in several flavours. Padel.fyi lists Mixed Americano, Team Americano and Mexicano among them.
| Variant | What changes | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Mixed Americano | Every pair is one man and one woman, rotating each round | Mixed socials with equal numbers |
| Team Americano | You play as a pair against a rotating set of opposing teams | Groups who arrive as pairs |
| Mexicano | After round 1, pairings follow the live standings | Groups of uneven padel level |
A Bucharest club’s Playtomic listing puts the mixed rule simply: “In every round, a male player is paired with a female player, facing another mixed pair”, which is why it asks for exactly 6 men and 6 women. Pure Padel in Stockport describes its Team Americano as played in pairs, with matches and opponents rotating so you meet different teams.
Mexicano is the variant people ask about most. It replaces the fixed schedule with pairings based on the standings, so matches get closer as the evening goes on. There is a full comparison in Americano vs Mexicano and the exact pairing rule on the Mexicano rules page.
How long an Americano takes
As a rule of thumb, Bandeja assumes about 0.6 minutes per point plus 2 minutes to change courts. That gives roughly 12 minutes for a 16-point match, 15 for 21 points, 16 for 24 points and 21 for 32 points.
| Group | Rounds | 16 points | 24 points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 players, 2 courts | 7 | about 84 min | about 112 min |
| 12 players, 3 courts | 11 | about 132 min | about 176 min |
| 16 players, 4 courts | 15 | about 180 min | about 240 min |
Most club sessions are booked for 90 or 120 minutes, which is why 8 players on 2 courts at 24 points is such a common setup: the whole cycle fits a two-hour booking. Larger groups usually play shorter matches or stop before the cycle is complete. For booking, timings and the rest of the logistics, read how to organise a padel tournament.
Running one with Bandeja
Bandeja builds the schedule, keeps the standings and puts them on a TV. Enter the players, pick courts and points per match, and the rotation appears. You can run it from a single phone, offline, or create a live room where each court gets a QR code: players scan it, enter a 4-digit PIN and submit their own score, and you approve it. The TV page shows the current round and standings full screen and rotates between them on its own. When you finish, share the results as WhatsApp text or a PNG image.
If you want a change of pace after a few weeks of Americano, King of the Court is the obvious next format to try.