Three days in Barcelona: Padel Rivals at Padel World Summit

I am writing this on the train back from Barcelona, with my voice half gone and the wifi cutting in and out. Padel World Summit 2026 is over. Padel Rivals was there. We are, and I mean this very literally, completely wrecked.

Last time I wrote here was right after the Coworking EOI Demoday, with the message "next stop, Barcelona". Well, that stop happened. Let me put it down before the details start blurring.

The stand never emptied

We had a small booth in the innovation startups area at Fira de Barcelona. One screen, one controller, the game running live. The idea was simple: anyone walks up, picks up the pad, plays a few points, talks to us. What I did not expect was the queue.

For three days, we barely had time to drink water. Brands I had only ever read about. Club owners running entire chains. Investors I had been trying to get on a call for months. Federations. Padel media. And, mostly, players. Players who at the end of every match looked at us with the exact same line, in five different languages: "I want this game already".

I had been worried, honestly, about how the game would hold up under that kind of public scrutiny. It held up. Not because it is finished, but because the arcade direction is right. People click with it on the first rally. That is the kind of signal you cannot fake.

The pitch on the Innovation Arena Stage

On Wednesday, ten minutes on the Innovation Arena Stage, in front of a room full of brand managers, investors and federation people. Padel Rivals, the first padel video game for PC and consoles.

I have given that pitch in some form on roughly every available stage this year. Each time, it gets a bit tighter. This one, in front of this audience, was the most calibrated version yet. I left the stage knowing which slides land and which two still need to die.

Where the good stuff actually happens

Wednesday night was the investor and founder afterhours, outdoors, drinks in hand. This is, by some margin, where the real work of an event like this happens. No slides, no pitching voice. You sit down with someone who has been in the industry for fifteen years and you trade real information.

Two of the conversations I had that night are already in follow up calls. A third one I am still processing.

On TV

On Thursday morning, TVE showed up at the stand. The team from "El segon cafè" was filming around the summit and decided Padel Rivals was, in their words, "a very innovative idea". They sat me down in front of the camera and we talked about the game, the studio, padel as a video game.

I had to ask my mum twice if she had seen it. She had. The studio's name on national television is one of those things you do not really process in the moment.

You can watch the clip on Acceso — Padel Rivals comes in around minute 2:44.

A longer interview, in case you want the full story

Aside from TVE, I also sat down for a much longer conversation with a padel content creator. We go through the studio's story, the early days of Padel Rivals, why we chose arcade instead of sim, what comes next. It is, honestly, the best interview I have done so far on the game.

And one Instagram post that took off

Somewhere in the middle of the chaos, one Instagram post about us at the summit got passed around by accounts well outside our usual circle. We saw a noticeable bump in Steam wishlists and Discord joins that afternoon, in real time. Watching that loop work on a project I care about this much was, frankly, a small high.

What I am taking home

Step back, write the headlines:

• We have open conversations with brands, investors and clubs we did not know two weeks ago.
• The arcade direction holds up under public pressure.
• There is still a long list of things to fix and polish.
• The studio exists on the map now. Not as a curiosity. As a player.

What comes next

OWN Valencia in July. The stand we won at the Demoday. Same demo, hometown crowd. After that, head down, build mode, until we have something genuinely ready for early access.

If you actually want to help: wishlist Padel Rivals on Steam. It is still the single most useful thing anyone outside the team can do for the project right now.

Thanks for reading. Going to sleep for about fourteen hours and then back to work.