With the 2026 Major League Pickleball draft set to take place at the end of February, the league announced some important news and rule updates on Thursday that will certainly shake up how the rest of the offseason plays out.

The biggest announcement is that three teams—the New York Hustlers, Nashville Chefs, and D.C. Pickleball Team—will not compete in 2026.

The Hustlers are merging with the Brooklyn Pickleball Team, while Nashville and D.C. are being given time to explore sale agreements.

The players who ended the 2025 season on these teams will return to the free agency pool and be eligible to be picked up in the upcoming draft.

Here are the players that will return to the free agency pool:

•             Helena Jansen Fink
•             Luana Stanciu
•             Ewa Radzikowska
•             Genie Erokhina
•             Christa Gecheva
•             Zane Ford
•             Donald Young
  •        Stephen Madonia
•             Anderson Scarpa
•             Marshall Brown
•             Stefan Auvergne
•             Rafa Hewett
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The biggest fallout from this news is that it leads to the disintegration of MLP levels; with 20 teams, there is now no longer a ‘Premier’ and ‘Challenger’ level.

Every team will compete in the same tier, and each team will roster six players.

Teams with players who are no longer under UPA contract

There are a number of players still on MLP rosters who are no longer under contract with the UPA. Teams who rostered these players in 2025 are allowed to trade cash for new players, an option that has not existed in prior seasons.

We already saw this once when the Chicago Slice—whose 2025 starters Vivian Glozman and James Ignatowich no longer have UPA contracts—paid the New Jersey 5s to acquire Zane Navratil last week.

Players no longer under contract will count as ‘drops’ at the Player Keeper Deadline.

2025 Challenger Teams

In a similar vein, the four active teams that competed in Challenger in 2025 (Las Vegas Night Owls, Bay Area Breakers, California Black Bears, Florida Smash) will also be allowed to trade cash for players.

Challenger rosters were capped at four players in 2025, but each team will need to fill six spots from now on. Of course, the Challenger teams can also choose to do this through the Free Agency Draft, which will take place on Feb. 27.

Player Acquisition process for Palm Beach Royals

MLP’s newest franchise, the Palm Beach Royals, will be able to add up to four players to their roster ahead of the Feb. 15 Player Keeper deadline.

This can happen in two ways: trades and free agent pickups.

•             Trades: Palm Beach can execute up to two cash-for-player trades. If they acquire a player who was drafted in 2024 and kept for 2025, they may keep that player only for the 2026 season. If they acquire a player who was selected in the 2025 draft, they may keep said player for both the 2026 and 2027 seasons.
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•             Free Agency: Palm Beach can acquire up to two non-rostered UPA-signed players and keep them on their roster for up to three seasons (2026-2028). Existing free agents who were eligible for the 2025 draft and did not end the year on an MLP roster will have a Draft Point cost of 10,000. New or emerging talent added to the league-approved player pool after the 2025 draft will have a Draft Point value of 80,000.
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Team Event Schedules

As previously reported, all nine regular season events will have a winning team that that takes home the most standings points.

With twenty teams competing now, though, things will look a little different.

There will be eleven total teams in action at each regular season event, with one group having five teams and one group having six.

The one exception to this will be the final regular season event being held at ESPN Wide World of Sports in July, which will feature twelve teams and two groups of six.

Throughout the season, each team will play two events in the group of five and three events in the group of six, which will give every team a total of 23 group play matches when all is said and done.

Key Dates and Events

Trade Window #1 will close on Feb. 15 at 10am ET.

Keepers will be due that same day at 4pm ET. Team keepers will be announced the following day on Feb. 16.

The Free Agency Draft will take place on Feb. 27 and will be conducted via a dynamic bidding process wherein teams bid on draft slots. Like in 2025, each team will have to have four players on its roster before any team can select a fifth player.

Also like in 2025, the minimum bid for a draft slot will be 10,000 draft points until each team has four players. From that point on, the minimum bid will be 1,000 draft points.

Click here to see the full announcement from MLP.