Vilnius Has Caught Padel Fever — Here's Where Locals Are Actually Playing

On a Tuesday night in Žirmūnai, the glass walls of the neighbourhood padel arena are already fogged up by nine, and there's a small queue by the door for the next open slot. Two years ago, that sentence would have needed a footnote explaining what padel even was. Now half of Vilnius seems to have a paddle rolling around in the boot of their car.

A Decade in the Making, Then Suddenly Everywhere

Padel isn't new here, exactly. The first courts in Lithuania went up in the summer of 2013 at Š. Marčiulionis's tennis club in Dubingiai, and the Lithuanian Padel Federation formed that December. For most of the decade that followed, it stayed a curiosity — a couple of clubs, a small circle of regulars, tennis players killing time between seasons.

Then it tipped. Playtomic's 2025 Global Padel Report counted a 22% jump in padel clubs worldwide in 2024 alone, most of it concentrated in southern Europe — but the international federation has been naming Lithuania specifically as one of the fastest-growing padel scenes in Central and Eastern Europe. In Vilnius you can watch that happen in real time: converted warehouses in Žirmūnai, spare halls tacked onto old tennis clubs, industrial units near Savanorių that were something else entirely eighteen months ago.

Who's Actually Good at This

Ask five people in Vilnius who the country's best padel player is and you'll get five different answers — the sport's too young here for a settled pecking order. Two names keep coming up anyway. Ligita Motiejauskaitė has become the closest thing Lithuania has to a padel ambassador, representing the country at the FIP European Championships and doing more for the sport's visibility on social media than most tournament results manage on their own. Titas Mikelevičius came at it sideways — a multiple-time Lithuanian tennis champion who picked up a paddle, ended up captaining the national padel federation's team, and talks openly about wanting to play the World Padel Tour one day. Neither would call themselves untouchable, and that's rather the point. The ceiling here is still being built, which is half the fun of watching it from courtside.

Where Vilnius Is Actually Playing

I pulled current listings straight from PadelMap's Vilnius directory before writing this, because opening hours and new venues shift fast enough that anything older than a season is unreliable. Right now there are 20 courts across the city on the books, and five come out on top by rating:

• Žirmūnų padelio arena, in Žirmūnai — a clean 5.0, and the one locals mention first.
• Padel Factory, on Savanorių pr. — also 5.0, tucked into the same stretch of converted industrial units drawing the after-work crowd.
• Rato Padelio arena, on J. Kubiliaus g. — smaller, quieter, and popular with people who'd rather not queue.
• Fanų padelio arena, on Metalo g. — a 4.7 average and one of the busier weekend bookings in the city.
• Mostai | Padelio klubas, also on Savanorių pr. — sitting at 4.3, still solid, and worth checking when the others are full.

None of that is fixed — ratings move, and new courts seem to open most months. Before committing to a Saturday morning slot, it's worth taking a minute to browse the full list of venues or check live ratings yourself rather than trust a list that's already a season old by the time you read it. Beyond what's listed there, the two names that come up most outside the directory are SEB Arena at the Bernardine Gardens, which added padel to its multi-sport lineup, and Vilnius Padel Arena, home to the A2 Padel Academy and its steady stream of adult and kids' training sessions.

What's actually driving all this isn't complicated. Padel is easier to pick up in a single afternoon than tennis, more social than squash, and an enclosed court means Vilnius's long grey season stops being an excuse. Book early for anything after 6pm on a weekday — that queue in Žirmūnai isn't going anywhere. And if you want the current picture rather than my word for it a year from now, it only takes a minute to compare courts side by side or see what's actually available before you show up.