Padel Tournament Formats: A Complete Guide

What are the main padel tournament formats?

The four padel tournament formats you will meet most often are Americano, Mexicano, King of the Hill, and Beat the Box. Each one changes how partners and opponents are chosen, so the right pick depends on your group size, skill spread, and how much time you have on court.

Every format above runs inside Padelino, which handles the pairing maths, the sit-out rotation, and a live leaderboard that your players follow from one shared link.

Americano: partners rotate, points add up

In an Americano padel tournament, every player partners with a different player each round, and individual points build towards a final total. There is no fixed team, so a strong player and a weak player will end up on the same side of the net multiple times over a night.

Matches typically run to a fixed total of points, such as 16, 21, 24, or 32, and the player with the most cumulative points across all rounds wins. Padelino's pairing engine spreads partners as evenly as it can and rotates sit-outs when the player count is not a clean multiple of four. Read the full rules on the Americano padel hub page.

Mexicano: pairings follow the ranking

Mexicano starts with a seeded first round, then re-pairs players after every round based on their current standing. The top two players move to court 1, the next two to court 2, and so on down the courts.

This makes Mexicano feel more competitive than Americano, because winning sends you up the courts and losing sends you down. It works best with a player pool that is fairly close in skill, since the format is unforgiving of a wide skill gap. See how the ranking and court assignment work on the Mexicano padel hub page.

King of the Hill: winners hold the court

King of the Hill keeps the winning pair on the top court and rotates the losing pair out for a fresh challenger pair. There is no fixed round count, so hosts usually set a time limit rather than a target number of rounds.

The format rewards streaks. A pair that keeps winning can hold the hill for several matches in a row, which is what gives King of the Hill its high-energy feel. Full details, including how reigns are counted, live on the King of the Hill padel hub page.

Beat the Box: boxes of four, three rounds each

Beat the Box splits the group into boxes of four players. Each box plays a fixed three-round mini-Americano among just its own four players, so everyone in a box partners each other member exactly once. All boxes play their rounds at the same time on separate courts, so more players means more boxes running side by side, not a longer night.

Points add up per player across the three rounds, the same way they do in a full Americano tournament, and decide the ranking inside each box. Any players left over once the boxes are filled sit out rather than joining a partial box. Read the full breakdown on the Beat the Box padel hub page.

Team Americano and the mixed variant

Not every group wants new partners every round. Team Americano keeps the same fixed pairs together for the whole night and rotates who they play against instead, which suits clubs that already have settled doubles partnerships. Clubs with a mixed-gender group can also switch on the Mixed variant, which pairs one man with one woman on every team and rotates those pairs round by round. The Mixed Americano padel guide covers exactly how that pairing logic works.

Pozo, round robin, and box leagues

Outside these four formats, you will also hear "Pozo" used, mostly in Spain, for a social rotation format that plays out much like Americano or Mexicano: players are mixed into new pairs each round rather than keeping a fixed partner. For competitions that run over several weeks rather than one night, clubs often use a round robin schedule, where every player or pair meets every other once, or a box league, where players are grouped by ability into boxes and move up or down between boxes based on results.

Which format should you choose?

For a first tournament with a friend group of mixed ability, Americano is the safest choice because it spreads partners evenly and nobody is stuck with the same teammate all night. For a club night where players are closer in level and want the pressure of climbing the courts, Mexicano is the better fit. If you only have time for a quick, loud session, King of the Hill gets going fastest. If you want short, self-contained rounds split across small groups, pick Beat the Box. Check the Americano padel odd number of players guide if your headcount is not a multiple of four.

Run it with Padelino

Every format on this page runs the same way in Padelino: add your players, pick a format, and let the app handle pairings, sit-outs, and scoring. Start a tournament in your browser at padelinoapp.com/app, or grab the iOS and Android app so you can run it from the court.