British Padel Players to Follow in 2026

If you only started following the sport because Premier Padel London 2026 sold out at Olympia, this is the catch-up: who the leading British padel players are in 2026, what they did in 2025, which juniors are coming through the FIP Promises circuit, and which names to watch when the world tour finally lands in the UK this August.

British rankings are derived from FIP (International Padel Federation) standings and published on the LTA Padel fan zone. The current top 10s look like this:

Women — GB top 10

1. Aimee Gibson — GB No.1
2. Catherine Rose — GB No.2
3. Tia Norton — GB No.3
4. Lisa Phillips — GB No.4
5. Abigail Tordoff — GB No.5
6. Laura Jackson — GB No.6
7. Olivia Ciftci — GB No.7
8. Eloise Tait — GB No.8
9. Christina Smith — GB No.9
10. Hanna Maddock — GB No.10

Men — GB top 10

1. Christian Medina Murphy — GB No.1
2. Louie Harris — GB No.2
3. Alex Loughlan — GB No.3
4. Cameron Dollimore — GB No.4
5. Theodore Garton — GB No.5
6. Ethan Bardo — GB No.6
7. Jaime Lobo Wordsworth — GB No.7
8. Sam Jones — GB No.8
9. Jake Bewley — GB No.9
10. Nikhil Mohindra — GB No.10

British padel is small enough that the top-five names crop up in almost every tournament write-up — get those locked in and the rest of the calendar makes more sense.

Aimee Gibson — the pathfinder

Gibson is the obvious place to start. In January 2025 she became the first British padel player of any gender to break the FIP top 100, and she spent the rest of the year compounding that result with five Cupra FIP Tour titles, including three consecutive trophies in the summer run. According to her LTA Padel profile, she was a top-15 LTA tennis player and coach before discovering padel while coaching in Dubai; she returned to the UK, won a string of LTA British Padel Tour Grade 1 events, and turned professional in summer 2023. In December 2025 she partnered Catherine Rose to win the inaugural LTA Padel National Championships, and she opened 2026 with a FIP Bronze Doha title alongside Spain's Alba Perez Momha. If LTA Padel's reading of the wildcard situation is right, expect her to feature in the London P1 main draw.

Catherine Rose — the second breakthrough

Rose followed Gibson into the FIP top 100 in September 2025, reaching the semi-finals or better at nine FIP events through the year and adding two FIP Silver titles in Australia. As Gibson's partner at the LTA Nationals — and a regular fixture in the GB squad — she is the second name that most matters when British women travel to international team events.

Tia Norton — the rising third seed

Norton sat at world No.130 at the end of 2025 with five semi-finals and one final from her last seven FIP outings. That kind of run is exactly the form that pushes a player towards the top-100 threshold, and she goes into 2026 as the third name on GB team sheets behind Gibson and Rose.

Lisa Phillips and Abigail Tordoff — the doubles success

Phillips and Tordoff partnered to win their first FIP Tour title together at FIP Bronze Kuala Lumpur in 2025. Both were named in the eight-strong GB women's squad for the FIP Euro Padel Cup, and the Kuala Lumpur title is the kind of result that justifies their place on the team sheet.

Christian Medina Murphy — the elite-tour benchmark

Medina Murphy holds the men's GB No.1 spot and recorded the best British result ever at a Premier Padel tournament when he reached the quarter-finals at the Premier Padel event in Cancún. He added a fourth career FIP Tour title at FIP Bronze Hong Kong II later in the year. LTA Padel's Premier Padel guide explicitly names him as the most likely British wildcard recipient for the London P1.

Louie Harris and Alex Loughlan — the National Championship duo

Harris and Loughlan won the men's title at the inaugural LTA Padel Nationals in Bristol in December 2025. Loughlan also reached his first FIP final at FIP Bronze Denmark earlier in 2025 — notable because his world ranking sat outside the top 300 at the time. The 2025 GB men's squad bracketed both alongside Sam Jones, Nikhil Mohindra, and debutants Jamie Lobo and Alex Loughlan (both training full-time overseas), captained by Sandy Farquharson and John Leach.

If you missed 2025, three results explain why 2026 looks more credible than any year before it.

Both GB teams qualified for the Euro Padel Cup Final 8

In October 2025, both the GB women's and men's squads reached the Final 8 of the FIP Euro Padel Cup in Cadiz — each closing out their group with a 2-1 win (women over Germany, men over Sweden). It is the deepest the senior teams have gone in a major international team event.

The first inaugural LTA Padel National Championships

Held at Rocket Padel Bristol in December 2025 with a £10,000 prize fund, the inaugural Nationals produced clean storylines: Gibson and Rose took the women's title, Loughlan and Harris the men's. It is now a fixed point on the British calendar.

Top-100 milestones — Gibson and Rose

Gibson's January 2025 top-100 entry and Rose's September follow-up are the structural shifts. British women's padel now has two players inside that benchmark, and Norton inside the top 130 makes a credible run at being the third.

The FIP Senior Euro Padel Cup was a more mixed year — GB women finished 8th and men 11th, per LTA Padel's results round-up — but the senior bracket has historically been weaker for GB and is not the team event most British fans follow closely.

The most-watched name in the British junior bracket is Jules Bakunowicz, who took U14 titles at FIP Promises Bristol and FIP Promises Valladolid in 2025. Andrew Dunn and Lenni Strohl won the U14 pairs title at FIP Promises Stratford in October 2025, per PadelFIP's tournament report.

At team level, the GB boys and girls competed at the FIP Junior World Cup in Costa Daurada in 2025 but narrowly missed qualifying for the main draw. The FIP Promises circuit is itself being restructured for 2026 with revised categories — worth tracking via PadelFIP for next season's calendar — and the British junior pipeline is still small enough that one or two breakthrough results from the U14/U18 categories will define the narrative.

Three sources cover the bulk of what you need:

• LTA Padel — official British rankings, squad announcements, National Championships coverage, and tournament previews/results for events held in the UK.
• PadelFIP — the international federation's tournament calendar, FIP Tour and FIP Promises results, and individual player FIP rankings.
• Premier Padel — the elite tour's official site for schedules, draws, and live streams for Major / P1 / P2 events including London 2026.

For broader context, our Premier Padel London 2026 guide covers the August tournament in detail; the LTA Padel Pathway explainer covers how British players come up through the domestic system; and Padel for Beginners UK 2026 is the on-ramp if any of this prompted you to pick up a racket.