Road to the Finals: everything you need to know about the FIP Race to Barcelona. 13 players already qualified, but the race remains wide open across Premier Padel and CUPRA FIP Tour

Premier Padel Finals are still three months away, but the FIP Race has already delivered its first verdicts. Following the Paris Major, the second Major played this season after Rome, 13 players are already certain to be at Palau Sant Jordi from 10 to 13 December: six men (Arturo Coello, Agustin Tapia, Fede Chingotto, Ale Galan, Juan Lebron and Leo Augsburger) and seven women (Gemma Triay, Delfi Brea, Bea Gonzalez, Paula Josemaria, Andrea Ustero, Ari Sanchez and Claudia Fernandez). But there will still be plenty of opportunities to earn points in the FIP Race, the ranking that takes into account results throughout the calendar year and determines qualification for the Finals, with 32 players (16 men and 16 women) set to compete for the title won in 2025 by Claudia Fernandez, Bea Gonzalez, Arturo Coello and Agustin Tapia.

CURRENT SITUATION Coello and Tapia, thanks to the 2,000 points they earned at Roland Garros, have moved clear of Chingotto and Galan: the gap now stands at 1,270 points (12,620 to 11,350), while Lebron and Augsburger are both on 5,655 points, having played together since the start of the season. Just behind them, in seventh place in the FIP Race, is Mike Yanguas (4,005), followed by his former partner Franco Stupaczuk (3,735). For the past few weeks, Yanguas has been playing again with Coki Nieto, while Stupa is now alongside Jon Sanz. In the women’s Race, just behind the seven qualified players is Martina Calvo, a finalist in Paris who lost the title match alongside Claudia Fernandez to Ari Sanchez and Andrea Ustero. With the 2,000 points earned in Paris, Sanchez and Ustero have closed the gap on Bea Gonzalez and Paula Josemaria, who are now just 400 points ahead (8,480 to 8,080). Reaching the semi-finals at the French Major also allowed Marta Ortega to move up two places, from 12th to 10th, overtaking Tamara Icardo and Claudia Jensen, who were forced to miss the Major due to the Spanish player’s injury.

CALENDAR There are still thousands of points up for grabs before the Finals, not only across the six remaining Premier Padel tournaments: two Majors (Kuwait and Acapulco), two P2s (Rotterdam and Düsseldorf, the next two events on the calendar) and two P1s (Milan and Dubai). A total of 7,200 points will be available to the winning pairs (2,000 for the Majors, 1,000 for the P1s and 600 for the P2s). There are also numerous CUPRA FIP Tour events, which have already welcomed some of the world’s top players in recent months, as happened a few weeks ago in Belgrade, where Stupaczuk, Sanz, Nieto and Yanguas faced each other in the final of the FIP Gold held in the Serbian capital. Two more FIP Platinum tournaments remain on the calendar, each offering 300 FIP Race points: next week in Lyon, Stupaczuk and Sanz are among those entered, alongside Guerrero/Leal, Di Nenno/Tello and Gonzalez/Campagnolo in the men’s draw, while Alejandra Salazar and Aranzazu Osoro lead the women’s entry list, followed by Giulia Dal Pozzo and Ale Alonso. The other FIP Platinum will be held in November in Aguascalientes, Mexico, in the week preceding the Acapulco Major. Alongside the two FIP Platinum tournaments, there will also be five FIP Gold events, each awarding 150 FIP Race points to the winners: the series begins this week in São Paulo, Brazil, before moving to Italy, with events in Perugia (28 September–4 October) and Turin (26 October–1 November), two legs of the Mediolanum Padel Cup, both in the FIP Gold category. In between, there will be two tournaments in Spain, one in Seville (12–18 October) and one in Melilla (19–24 October). The long road to the Finals still promises plenty of excitement and twists and turns.