The 2026 Paddle Calendar — every release, dated and sourced
38 launches, 27 brands, the rules and lawsuits between them, and a forecast that shows its work.
Thirty-eight pickleball paddle releases from twenty-seven brands, January through the three drops still ahead: JOOLA's first foam paddle on September 30, Gearbox's Pressure X on October 1, the same day USA Pickleball's 2,100 RPM spin test takes effect, and the RPM Jade the week after. Each one is dated, priced, and linked to where the fact came from, with a confidence mark and a note on how precisely the date is known. Read whole, the calendar says a few things. Foam won: thirty of the thirty-eight are full-foam builds, and the last holdouts moved this year. With power capped, the fight went to grit that lasts, and nearly every challenger launched a named surface. The $99 paddle now has the features of last year's $220 paddle, while the top held at $280 to $300 and added tuning weights to justify it. Patents became a design constraint: JOOLA took eleven brands to the ITC, eight have settled, and three of this year's launches already have end dates because of it. The news runs alongside the releases in the same ledger: Waters to Franklin, Selkirk's first outside money and its purchase of Bread & Butter, Paddletek Group buying PIKKL, the PPA's three-week Proton ban, the field-testing numbers. Below that are company files on twenty-nine brands, a signings table, and the lab numbers on grit retention. The forecast runs to spring 2027 and labels what each call rests on: a rule, a release pattern, an inference, or an open question. None of it is inside information. Every row now opens that paddle's own page in the register at /paddles. The same calendar lives on Rally, and the whole dataset is one CC0 JSON file.
