Major League Pickleball's 2026 season doesn't end at the American border.

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In fact, while the U.S. Major League Pickleball season has wrapped up, two of the more interesting experiments in professional pickleball are just getting started on the other side of the world.

MLP Australia begins its 2026 season Friday, September 18 in Melbourne, featuring eight franchises and some names U.S. fans have become very familiar with.

Then, on November 13, MLP Asia will play the first matches in league history, beginning a six-team season that spans Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Vietnam, China and Malaysia.

The leagues share the MLP name and team-based DNA, but their structures are actually quite different.

Australia has developed into an established professional league with traditional four-player MLP rosters and a growing pathway from amateur pickleball into the professional game. Asia is taking a much more ambitious geographic approach, combining domestic players from six different markets with international pros through one of the more creative draft systems we have seen in pickleball.

So, let's take a look at both.

MLP Australia

MLP Australia has come a long way since MLP first entered the Australian market in 2023.

For 2026, the Premier league has been trimmed to eight franchises, down from 12 in 2025. Each Premier roster consists of the familiar MLP combination of two men and two women.

The league also has two additional levels underneath Premier: DUPR 22 and Champions 50+. Each of the eight franchises is represented at all three levels, while The Dink Minor League Pickleball Australia serves as a qualification pathway into the DUPR 22 and Champions divisions.

At the Premier level, there is more than $200,000 in prize money available during the four-event season.

The format will be instantly recognizable to anyone who watches MLP in the United States: women's doubles, men's doubles and two mixed doubles games, followed by a DreamBreaker if the match is tied 2-2.

The Eight MLP Australia Premier Rosters

The full rosters were confirmed by MLP Australia following its July draft.

There are plenty of familiar names here.

Danni-Elle Townsend has become one of the biggest crossover success stories between Australia and the United States. Townsend played MLP Australia before becoming a major piece of the U.S. MLP ecosystem.

Sahra Dennehy is another name American MLP fans now know well, while Joey Wild, Sarah Burr, Andie Dikosavljevic, Lucas Pascoe and others have helped create a legitimate group of high-level Australian players.

MLP Australia's own alumni list shows how much the connection between the leagues has grown, with Townsend and Dennehy among several players to move from MLPA competition into MLP in the United States.

The 2026 draft added another layer.

Brisbane held the No. 1 overall selection and grabbed Harry — also known as Harrison — Brown. Defending 2025 champion Bondi selected Katy Hart third overall, Gold Coast added Jamie Haas with the fourth pick and The Coasters took Ryan Henry fifth. First-round additions elsewhere included Tom Protzek, Talia Saunders, Lucas Pascoe and Joey Farias.

One significant roster rule is that Premier teams can carry a maximum of one international player, meaning the league remains heavily focused on developing talent from Australia and New Zealand rather than simply importing full rosters of American pros.

MLP Australia 2026 Schedule

The Sydney finale will also include Jr. MLP competition.

Bondi enters 2026 as the defending Premier champion, but with only eight franchises and much of the best talent concentrated onto four-player rosters, the league should be deeper from top to bottom than it was a year ago.

Now Comes MLP Asia

If Australia represents what international MLP can become after several years of development, Asia is the brand-new experiment.

PPA Asia and MLP Asia were originally announced in November 2024, with former World Table Tennis executive Kimberly Koh selected to lead the venture. PPA Tour Asia launched first, followed by the inaugural MLP Asia season in 2026.

Six franchises will compete:

China's Dragon Warriors, the Hong Kong Cannons, Malaysia's Malayan Stripes, the Philippines' Manila Helios, Team Tokyo, and Vietnam's Viet Panthers.

But the most interesting part may be how the rosters were constructed.

Instead of four-player teams, MLP Asia teams have six players — three domestic players and three international players.

Each franchise first selected three domestic players, with at least one male and one female required. One of those players was then designated captain.

After that came an International Draft, where teams filled their remaining three roster spots.

The Six MLP Asia Rosters

The International Draft produced some serious names this past weekend.

Tama Shimabukuro went No. 1 overall to the Viet Panthers, followed by Eunggwon Kim to the Malayan Stripes and India's Armaan Bhatia to Hong Kong.

Seina Shima went fourth, Nasa Hatakeyama fifth and Grayson Goldin sixth.

Then the recognizable U.S. names kept coming. Chao Yi Wang went seventh, Kaitlyn Christian eighth and Lacy Schneemann somehow lasted until the 18th and final selection - yes, this is mind boggling to me, as well.

Connor Garnett and Riley Newman were among the notable players who went undrafted.

MLP Asia's Draft Was Completely Different

This is where things get really interesting.

Every franchise entered the International Draft with a $250,000 spending cap, but that money wasn't exclusively for player salaries.

Teams also had to use their budget to bid for draft position.

Each of the three rounds started with an auction. The team submitting the highest bid earned the right to pick first in that round, followed by the second-highest bidder and so on.

Player salaries were predetermined by Pickleball World Ranking:

Top-20 players cost $25,000, players ranked 21-50 cost $10,000 and players ranked 51 or lower cost $5,000.

So a front office wasn't simply deciding which player it wanted. It had to determine how much draft capital it was willing to spend just for the opportunity to select that player while remaining under the same $250,000 overall budget.

That's a genuinely interesting wrinkle that makes roster construction very different from the current American MLP model.

The MLP Asia Schedule

MLP Asia is also taking a different approach to scheduling.

Instead of having all six teams meet in one city for a traditional MLP event, each franchise gets a home match night.

The home team plays two different opponents back-to-back, creating six geographically distinct match nights during three weeks of pool play.

After pool play, the top four teams advance.

The semifinals take place December 11, followed by what the league is calling "Super Saturday" on December 12, when the first MLP Asia champion will be crowned.

As of publication, the host location for the playoff weekend has not yet been announced.

The Bigger Picture

The most interesting part of MLP Australia and MLP Asia isn't simply that Major League Pickleball has put its name on leagues outside the United States.

It's the player pathway being created between them.

Australia has already shown it can help develop players who eventually become valuable commodities in American MLP. Asia's first draft includes players who compete throughout the United States, Australia and the growing PPA Asia circuit alongside domestic players who American pickleball fans may barely know today.

And that is probably the real story to watch.

Professional pickleball is becoming increasingly international, and MLP is beginning to look less like one American league exporting its format and more like a collection of interconnected regional leagues.

MLP Australia starts September 18.

MLP Asia starts November 13.

If you thought the 2026 Major League Pickleball season was already over, you may want to keep your passport handy.