Badminton's origins, from battledore to the BWF.

Battledore and shuttlecock

The badminton historian Bernard Adams, in an extract from The Badminton Story, says the older game of battledore and shuttlecock was played for at least 2,000 years, in places including ancient Greece, China, Japan, India and Siam. The extract is undated and was posted to a mailing list, so this is his account rather than a dated record.

Where badminton began: two accounts

The popular account: India first, then Badminton House in 1873

The popular story, repeated by Olympics.com and seen here in a search summary, is that British army officers in India around the 1860s took up a local game, added a net and called it Poona, after the city of Pune. They brought it to England, where the Duke of Beaufort introduced it to guests at Badminton House in Gloucestershire in 1873, and the house gave the sport its name. Olympics.com is also summarised as saying the exact origins of badminton remain obscure.

The Badminton Museum's account: Badminton House first, then India

The Badminton Museum says shuttle badminton grew out of battledore and shuttlecock at Badminton House, the Duke of Beaufort's home, in the early 1860s, and was probably taken to India by officers of the British Indian Army; it notes that the Duke had sons in that army. It records an 1864 photograph caption describing a "Badminton party" at the Simla hill station, and says the game was popular in India by the early 1870s.

Adams says a new version of battledore had appeared at Badminton House by the end of the 1850s, and does not tie the house to 1873.

The 1873 lawn party. The story of a particular gathering at Badminton House in 1873 was not found in any museum or governing-body source read for this site. It is part of the popular account only and is unconfirmed.

Ball badminton, a separate game

The museum records ball badminton, played with a woollen ball, as a different Indian game, originating in Tanjore in Tamil Nadu and played as early as 1856. It says that game was also called "Poona" in its early days, and that the Ball Badminton Federation of India was founded in 1954.

The first rules, 1873 onwards

The museum calls the Calcutta rules, a handbook by Major Henry Twiston Forbes published in Calcutta, probably the earliest known set of rules. The Field printed them on 11 October 1873 alongside the Nagpore rules, and a week later printed the Simla rules as adopted at Murree in the Punjab. The museum also records rules first produced by Lieutenant H. O. Selby in 1873. Adams gives a different first: he says the first rules were framed at Poona in 1873.

The museum names two men who carried the rules forward:

• George William Vidal is said to have played the first game in western India, at Satara on 10 July 1873, and helped frame the 1873 laws. He was later Secretary and Treasurer of the Badminton Association, from 1899 to 1906.
• John Henry Eustace Hart first played at Karachi in 1874 and revised Selby's rules in 1876. He came back from India in 1887, was connected with the Bath Badminton Club, and revised the rules again in 1890 with Mr Bagnel-Wild. The museum says his rules were the basis of those the Badminton Association adopted in 1893.

Two further dates are unconfirmed. Adams records an officers' badminton club at Folkestone as early as 1875, from his account alone. A low-quality copy of a short history, seen in a summary, says the Bath club set the first rules in 1877, but the museum ties Hart's Bath connection to the years after 1887.

The Badminton Association, 1893

The museum says Major (later Colonel) S. S. C. Dolby, honorary secretary of the Southsea Badminton Club, wrote to clubs and placed a notice in The Field in August 1893. The founding meeting was held at 2 pm on 13 September 1893 at Dunbar, Waverley Grove, Southsea, near Portsmouth. It framed rules for the association and for the game, and Dolby was the first president, from 1893 to 1898.

How many clubs founded it is given two ways. The museum says nine clubs were present and 14, mostly from Hampshire, Sussex and Devon, joined in the first year. Adams says it was founded by representatives of 14 clubs.

The museum dates the first open tournament to 1898, held by the Guildford Badminton Club. The association's first All England Championships followed in 1899 at the London Scottish Drill Hall in Westminster, with only the three doubles events; the two singles events were added in 1900. In 1934 the association handed responsibility for the game internationally to the new International Badminton Federation and became the Badminton Association of England, which took the name Badminton England in 2005.

A world body: the IBF, 1934

Search summaries of the BWF's 90th-anniversary material say the IBF was founded on 5 July 1934 at a meeting in London called by the Badminton Association, with nine founding members: Canada, Denmark, England, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales. The BWF pages returned errors when fetched, so this rests on the summaries; Adams confirms July 1934. The place is disputed: Wikipedia gives Cheltenham, which it also names as the head office the IBF later left for Kuala Lumpur, while the BWF material as summarised, and GKToday, give London for the meeting.

In the United States, USA Badminton says it was founded in 1936 in Brookline, Massachusetts, as the American Badminton Association, and joined the IBF in 1938. It says it became the USBA in 1978 and USA Badminton in 1996; the USA Badminton Museum, seen in a summary, gives 1976 and 1997 for the same two changes.

Adams records the first Thomas Cup, the men's world team event, in 1949, and the first Uber Cup, for women, in the 1956/57 season, won by the United States against Denmark. No BWF page was read to confirm these dates.

The split of 1978 and unification in 1981

Search summaries of BWF Olympic material and of Wikipedia say a rival World Badminton Federation was formed on 24 February 1978, led by China, which was not then an IBF member, with 13 Asian and six African associations joining, and that it held its own world championships in Bangkok in November 1978. An Indonesian news piece, also seen in a summary, calls the rival body the Badminton World Federation and says 22 countries founded it. The IBF and the rival federation signed a Deed of Unification in Tokyo on 26 May 1981. None of these BWF pages could be opened, so the details are unconfirmed.

From IBF to BWF

Wikipedia says the IBF moved its headquarters to Kuala Lumpur in 2005 and adopted the name Badminton World Federation at an extraordinary general meeting in Madrid on 24 September 2006. The month of the move is disputed: GKToday gives 1 October 2005, and a BWF page, seen in a summary, gives June 2005.

Badminton's road to the Olympic Games in 1992 is on the Olympic story, the history of shuttles and rackets is on rackets from wood to graphite, and the BWF as it is today, including the scoring change adopted on 25 April 2026, is on badminton bodies and tours.