Skanderbeg Square and Tirana are ready to welcome a champion who has written the history of Padel. Alejandra Salazar’s résumé speaks for itself: the Spanish player has won 67 titles, including a World Championship in pairs with Marta Marrero and seven team World Championships, six of them consecutively. This record makes her the athlete — among both men and women — with the most team World Championship titles in the history of the sport, one more than another legend, Fernando Belasteguin.
At 40 years old, Salazar will retire from Padel at the end of the season, but she is giving herself one last dance in her own style. In the last two FIP Platinum tournaments, in Lyon (October 2025) and Marseille (February 2026), she reached two finals, winning the one in Lyon. Next week in Albania, she will aim to win another FIP Platinum title alongside another Ale, Alonso, one of the brightest talents of the NextGen of world padel. Ale Salazar and Ale Alonso, currently number 13 and 14 in the FIP rankings respectively, are the number 1 seeds in the women’s draw of the FIP Platinum Albania, followed by number 15 Marina Guinart and number 16 Veronica Virseda.
Guinart, a hugely powerful left-handed player, won the CUPRA FIP Finals 2024 in France (the closing event of the CUPRA FIP Tour, of which the Tirana Platinum will also be part), reached the final of the FIP Platinum in Lyon and, above all, the semifinals of the latest Cancun P2 and last year’s Italy Major Premier Padel, the tournament that will follow the event in Skanderbeg Square.
Guinart won the CUPRA FIP Finals 2024 together with Victoria Iglesias, who will arrive in Tirana as the number 4 seed alongside Argentina’s Aranzazu Osoro. The number 3 seeds, meanwhile, will be Bea Caldera and Carmen Goenaga, number 17 in the FIP rankings and capable of reaching the quarterfinals at the Premier Padel tournaments in Miami (P1) and NewGiza (P2). Martina Fassio (24) and the very young Raquel Eugenio (born in 2008, number 23 in the rankings) will be the number 5 seeds, followed in the entry list by Italian player Carolina Orsi and another Spanish legend, Patty Llaguno.
Overall, Tirana will host 14 of the world’s top 30 players: from Tuesday 26 to Saturday 30, Albanian fans — who will have free access to the four courts set up in the capital’s most iconic square — will enjoy the show of Padel.