The history of badminton: from Poona to the Olympics

The history of badminton is younger than the game it grew out of. People have been knocking shuttlecocks about for centuries, but the sport with a net, a court and a rulebook was put together by British officers in India and English country-house guests in the 1870s, codified in the 1890s and given a world body in 1934. Everything since, from the first Olympic medals in 1992 to games of 15 points in 2027, has been built on that Victorian frame.

If you are new to the sport, our New to badminton page gives you the short version alongside the greats, the health research and how to start. This is the long version.

Before badminton: shuttlecock games

Games with a feathered shuttle turn up across Asia and Europe long before anyone drew a court. In China, jianzi, where a weighted shuttle is kept in the air with the feet, is generally dated back to the Han dynasty. In Europe, children and adults played battledore and shuttlecock: two people with small bats, keeping the shuttle up between them for as long as they could. There was no net and, for most of its history, no winner. The point was the rally.

That is worth remembering when you watch a modern rally. The object changed from co-operation to competition, but the shuttle’s strange flight, fast off the racket and then dropping almost straight down, is the same thing that made the old game fun.

Poona and Badminton House

Two places give the sport its early story, and historians still argue over the exact order.

The first is Poona, now Pune, in western India. British army officers there played a version of battledore and shuttlecock with a net in the 1860s and 1870s, and the game took the town’s name. The first written rules are said to have been drawn up there in 1873.

The second is Badminton House in Gloucestershire, the country seat of the Dukes of Beaufort. The game was played there around 1873, and the house gave the sport the name it still carries. Whether officers on leave brought the net game home or guests at the house invented their own version independently is one of those questions without a clean answer. What is clear is that by the late 1870s, people in England were playing something we would recognise.

Rules, clubs and the first championships

Early badminton had a problem every new sport has: everyone played slightly different rules. Courts varied in shape and size, and so did the scoring. The Bath Badminton Club drew up a set of regulations in 1887, and those became the basis of the national rules.

On 13 September 1893, nine clubs met at a house called Dunbar in Southsea, Portsmouth, and formed the Badminton Association, the body later known as the Badminton Association of England and today as Badminton England. Fourteen clubs had joined by the end of the first year. The association published a common set of laws, and from then on a match in Bath and a match in London were the same game.

Six years later, in 1899, the association ran the first All England Championships. Only the doubles events were played that first year; singles were added in 1900. The All England is the oldest badminton tournament still running, and for most of the 20th century it was the unofficial world championship. Until the World Championships began in 1977 it was the closest thing the sport had to a world title, and it is still widely regarded as the most prestigious annual tournament on the calendar.

A world body and the first team events

By the 1930s badminton was organised in several countries, and on 5 July 1934 nine national associations founded the International Badminton Federation (IBF): Canada, Denmark, England, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales. Its first president was the Englishman Sir George Thomas.

Thomas also gave his name to the men’s world team championship. He donated the trophy in 1939, but the war pushed the first event back to 1948–49. Malaya won it, beating Denmark 8–1 in the final in Preston. The women’s equivalent, the Uber Cup, followed in 1956–57, and the United States won the first three editions. The individual World Championships did not arrive until 1977.

From Danish power to Asian dominance

In the first half of the 20th century, badminton’s centre of gravity was England and then Denmark. Denmark was a founder member of the IBF, reached that first Thomas Cup final, and has produced strong players in every generation since.

Malaya’s Thomas Cup win in 1949 was the first sign of where the game was heading. Indonesia then dominated the men’s team event from the late 1950s to the late 1970s and has won it more often than any other nation. Indonesia’s Rudy Hartono won seven All England titles in a row from 1968 to 1974 and an eighth in 1976, a men’s singles record that still stands.

China arrived in the early 1980s and immediately changed the balance, beating Indonesia 5–4 in its first Thomas Cup final. Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Chinese Taipei and Thailand all became forces in their own right. India’s Prakash Padukone won the All England in 1980, the first Indian to do so, and India won its first Thomas Cup in 2022 by beating Indonesia 3–0.

Why Asia? Our reading: partly sheer numbers: badminton is a mass participation sport in Indonesia, Malaysia and China in a way it never became in most of Europe. Partly systems: national training centres, school programmes and full-time professional squads were built in Asia while most European players were still fitting training around jobs. And partly culture. In Indonesia and Malaysia, badminton is one of the main national sports, and the best players are household names.

Into the Olympics

Badminton’s route into the Olympics took twenty years. It was a demonstration sport at the 1972 Munich Games and an exhibition sport again in Seoul in 1988. At Barcelona in 1992 it became a full medal sport, with four events: men’s and women’s singles and doubles. Mixed doubles was added at Atlanta in 1996, giving the five events played today.

Those first Barcelona medals tell you a lot about the sport’s map. Susi Susanti won the women’s singles and Alan Budikusuma the men’s singles, Indonesia’s first Olympic gold medals. Korea took both doubles titles. In 1996 Denmark’s Poul-Erik Høyer-Larsen became the first player from outside Asia to win Olympic men’s singles. At Sydney 2000 China won four of the five events, and at London 2012 it won all five.

For how the Olympic singles and doubles champions compare with the rest of the sport’s greats, see the greatest badminton players of all time.

Scoring: side-out, rally point and 3x15

Badminton has changed its scoring more often than most sports, and every change was argued over.

For most of the 20th century the game used side-out scoring: only the serving side could win a point. Games went to 15, women’s singles to 11, with “setting” (an optional extension) near the end. Because you could only score on your own serve, a match had no predictable length, which made life hard for television and tournament schedules.

After a short-lived trial of five games to 7 in 2002, the IBF switched to rally-point scoring in 2006: every rally wins a point, games go to 21, two clear from 20-all, capped at 30. That is the system most club players have grown up with. The same year, the IBF renamed itself the Badminton World Federation (BWF). By then it had already moved its headquarters to Kuala Lumpur, which tells you where the sport’s weight now sits.

The next change is close. From 4 January 2027, BWF-sanctioned play moves to 3x15: best of three games to 15, two clear from 14-all, capped at 21, with the interval at 8. BWF’s member associations approved it in April 2026 after two failed attempts to bring in five games to 11. Our guide to the 3x15 scoring system has every rule and what it means for your club.

Period	System	Game to	Who can score
To 2006	Side-out	15 (women’s singles 11)	Serving side only
2006 to 3 January 2027	Rally point, 3x21	21, cap at 30	Either side
From 4 January 2027	Rally point, 3x15	15, cap at 21	Either side

Equipment: wood, steel, aluminium, carbon

The first rackets were wooden, and much heavier than anything you would buy today.

By the mid-1960s, foreign makers were selling rackets with steel frames and shafts, while Japanese rackets were still wooden. In 1968 Yonex released the B-7000, which it describes as Japan’s first metal racket, with an aluminium head joined to the shaft by a T-joint. Ten years later, in 1978, Yonex put the first badminton rackets under 100 g on sale.

Since then carbon-fibre composite, usually called graphite, has taken over completely. It is light, stiff and can be shaped precisely, which is why a modern racket can be built head-heavy for power or head-light for speed. If you are choosing one, our guide to head-heavy vs head-light rackets explains what the balance point does to your game.

The shuttle has changed less. The Laws of Badminton still describe the classic shuttle: 16 feathers fixed in a cork base, weighing 4.74 to 5.50 g. Shuttles with a synthetic skirt are also permitted, and nylon shuttles became the standard for schools, beginners and casual play because they last far longer. Top-level competition still uses feathers, because nothing else flies quite the same way. Our comparison of feather vs nylon shuttlecocks covers the difference in detail.

Europe fights back

For two decades after 1992, Asia won almost everything. Europe’s answer has come in bursts, and lately in a rush.

Høyer-Larsen’s gold in 1996 stood alone for twenty years. Then, in 2016, Spain’s Carolina Marín won the Olympic women’s singles in Rio, the first player from outside Asia to do so, and the same year Denmark won the Thomas Cup, beating Indonesia in the final. BWF called it Europe’s first title at any of the three world team championships. Denmark’s Viktor Axelsen then won Olympic men’s singles gold in Tokyo and again in Paris, the first European to win back-to-back Olympic singles titles. Of the 18 Olympic singles golds awarded from 1992 to 2024, four went to Europeans.

The latest wave comes from France. In May 2026 the French men’s team reached their first Thomas Cup final in Horsens, losing 3–1 to China. In October, Christo Popov won the French Open and became the first Frenchman to reach No. 1 in the men’s singles world ranking. You can follow his season on our Christo Popov profile.

Asia is still the centre of the sport. But a European player can now win anything, and that was not true for most of the last century.

What to do next

Watch an old All England final on video and then a current one. The rackets, the shoes and the score have all changed, but the shuttle still falls the same way. Then go and play: our New to badminton page tells you how to start.