Pétanque in Palau

Palau, a Pacific island nation of around 340 islands in the western Caroline Islands, appears on the roster of the Confédération de Pétanque de l'Océanie (Oceania Confederation) alongside Australia, New Caledonia, French Polynesia (Tahiti), New Zealand, and Vanuatu. A FIPJP-registered national federation exists on paper, but we could not independently verify an active club network or competition history for Palau from public sources.

What We Could Verify

Palau's membership in the six-nation Oceania Confederation is corroborated by regional pétanque sources, including Pétanque New Zealand's own representation pages, which name Palau alongside the confederation's other members, and by FIPJP's own Oceania Confederation page, which lists Palau among its affiliated federations with a linked nation record.

Correction (2026-10-10): a prior version of this page (and several sibling country pages) described the confederation as having seven members including Wallis and Futuna. A direct fetch of FIPJP's own Oceania Confederation federations page this cycle confirms it lists exactly six affiliated federations - Australia, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, New Zealand, Palau, and Vanuatu - with no Wallis and Futuna entry; that territory competes in (and has hosted) the Oceania Championship via its FFPJP affiliation rather than as an independent FIPJP member.

Correction (2026-10-06): a prior version of this page stated that no FIPJP national-federation record for Palau could be found. That was wrong - FIPJP's own nation PDF for Palau (fipjp.org/images/pdf/nations/palau.pdf), fetched directly this cycle, names a Fédération Pétanque Republic of Palau (FIPJP member since 2024), with Jason Blanc listed as president, a contact email of palau.petanque@gmail.com (official FIPJP correspondence address: palau@fipjp.com), and a headquarters address at Ngerulmud, the capitol of Palau, in Melekeok. The federation's own seal, reproduced on the document, carries the year 2021, suggesting the body itself may predate its 2024 FIPJP affiliation by a few years. No telephone number or website is listed on the FIPJP record.

Beyond that federation record, we still found no named clubs, no press coverage of a Palauan team or player competing at an Oceania Championship, and no mention of "Jason Blanc" or the federation outside the FIPJP document itself. Palau's National Olympic Committee, which lists 14-15 affiliated national sports federations (including baseball, tennis, swimming, basketball, archery, and several combat sports) as of its most recent annual meetings, does not list pétanque among them in the sources we checked - a gap between FIPJP-level registration and domestic NOC recognition that is worth noting but not unusual for a newly affiliated, very small federation.

Why the Gap

Palau hosted the 2025 Pacific Mini Games in Koror (29 June - 9 July 2025), a multi-sport event for the Micronesian sub-region, but pétanque was not among the sports contested there, and it does not appear on the Micronesian Games program or the 2027 Pacific Games' sports list either. Other Oceania Confederation members' own pages on this site confirm that Palau did not field a team at the October 2025 Oceania Championship in Wallis and Futuna, the region's main competitive event. This suggests organized, competitive pétanque has limited or no on-the-ground presence in Palau today, even with a federation now formally registered with FIPJP - a pattern consistent with a small, recently affiliated member that has not yet built out a domestic competition structure.

We will update this page as soon as we can verify a club, player, or competition record for Palau from a citable primary source.