The short answer

Each game is played to 21 points, and you need a two-point lead to close it out. If the score reaches 20–20, play continues until someone leads by two — but only up to 30, so at 29–29 the very next point wins. A match is the best of three games, so you need to win two. This applies to singles and doubles alike, in both casual and international play.

How the scoring works

Modern badminton uses rally scoring: a point is awarded on every rally, no matter who served, and the side that wins the rally serves next. That wasn't always so — until 2006 only the serving side could score, and games went to 15 points (11 for women's singles). The switch to 21-point rally scoring made matches faster and easier to follow, and it's the system the Badminton World Federation has used ever since.

A few details that surprise people: the serve must be hit underhand, below the waist; the net sits at 1.55 m (just over 5 feet); and the shuttle has to be struck before it touches the floor — there's no bounce as in tennis. The court is 13.4 m long, a touch wider for doubles than singles.

Olympics & the pros

Yes, badminton is an Olympic sport — it joined the Summer Games at Barcelona in 1992, with five events: men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles, and mixed doubles. And yes, it's a serious professional sport. The BWF World Tour and World Championships draw full-time players competing for ranking points and prize money, with national programmes in dozens of countries.

The greats are global names in their home countries: China's Lin Dan, widely rated the best of all time; Malaysia's Lee Chong Wei; Spain's Carolina Marín, who took singles gold in 2016; Denmark's Viktor Axelsen; and South Korea's An Se-young. At the top level a smash can exceed 400 km/h, which is why badminton is officially the fastest racket sport in the world.

Where it's played

Badminton is far bigger than its backyard reputation in the West — an estimated 220 million people play worldwide, making it one of the most-played sports on the planet. It's especially huge across Asia: China and Indonesia are the historic powerhouses, with Malaysia, India, South Korea, Japan, Thailand and Chinese Taipei all fielding world-class players and packed arenas.

In Europe, Denmark is the standout — the only non-Asian nation to consistently challenge at the very top — alongside England and a strong club scene across the continent. Wherever it's played seriously, it's an indoor sport, because the shuttlecock is so light that even a faint draught throws it off course.

The shuttlecock

No one "invented" the shuttlecock — it's ancient. The game badminton grew out of, battledore and shuttlecock, was played over 2,000 years ago in ancient Greece, China and India, where players simply kept a feathered cork aloft with small bats. The modern sport took shape much later: British officers brought a version called "Poona" home from India, and it was christened badminton after a party at Badminton House in 1873, with the first official rules written in 1893.

A traditional shuttlecock is a small cork base set with 16 overlapping feathers, usually from a goose's wing, and its cone shape is what gives the game its strange physics — it leaves the racket at enormous speed but decelerates fast, so it can be both the fastest and the most delicate object in sport. Because feathers mean geese, the BWF began approving synthetic shuttlecocks for top tournaments from 2021, nudging the game gently toward a feather-free future.

What it costs to play

Badminton is one of the cheapest sports to take up. A complete backyard set — two rackets, a net and a few shuttles — runs only about $20–50, and that's genuinely all you need to start. Step up to club play and a decent racket is roughly $30–60, while serious players spend $100–200+ on a pro Yonex frame. Shuttlecocks are the running cost: cheap plastic ones last for ages, but a tube of a dozen feather shuttles (which top players prefer) is around $20–30 and wears out faster.

The other cost is the court. Many parks and leisure centres have free or low-cost courts, and dedicated indoor courts typically hire for $10–20 an hour shared between players — pennies per person. Compared with the gear and green fees of most sports, a lifetime of badminton is remarkably affordable. (Prices vary by country and brand; treat these as rough guides.)

The world's most underrated sport

In much of the West, badminton is filed under "garden game" — a gentle thing you play at a barbecue. Across most of the world it's the opposite: a blisteringly fast professional sport with the quickest projectile in any racket game, sold-out stadiums and national heroes. The gap between those two reputations is one of the odder facts in sport, and it's mostly an accident of geography. The same 21-point game is a relaxed knockabout in one country and an Olympic final in another.

So the answer to "how many points to win" is a simple 21 — but the better story is how much sport is packed into a cork, sixteen feathers and a $30 racket. If you like the scoring puzzles of racket sports, the deuce-and-advantage system in tennis is the natural next read.

Common questions

Quiz: badminton facts

Five quick rounds on the scoring, the history and the shuttle.

Facts & sources

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