Blind and low vision tennis

Did You Know?

• BLV tennis was one of ten sports at the IBSA World Games in Birmingham, England, in August 2023, with Australia dominating.
• The world championships are scheduled for August 2026 in Vilnius, Lithuania.
• The first world women's BLV tennis tournament is scheduled for September 2026 in Benidorm, Spain.

History

Blind and low vision tennis began in Japan in 1984, invented by Miyoshi Takei (c. 1942–2011). Today it is played in over thirty countries. The International Blind Tennis Association (IBTA) was founded in 2014. In September 2025, the IBTA signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA), followed by a separate agreement with the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in October 2025. This led to the IBSA Blind Tennis Committee being formed in August 2026 to manage the sport globally. It is not yet a Paralympic event.

Regions

By 2026, IBTA representative countries included Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, and Uganda; Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, USA, and Venezuela; India, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, and South Korea; Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, Turkey, and United Kingdom; and Australia and New Zealand. In the USA, the United States Blind Tennis Association (USBTA) was formed in 2022, and the first permanently-lined blind tennis courts were installed by July 2024 in four county parks across Pittsburgh. In Japan, from the inaugural 1990 national championships through its first 21 years, founder Miyoshi Takei won the national title sixteen times.