Table tennis has been part of the Olympic Games since Seoul 1988. At Paris 2024 there were five events: men's and women's singles, men's and women's team events and mixed doubles. Los Angeles 2028 changes that. The team events are replaced by men's and women's doubles and a new mixed team event, making six in all, with 172 players taking part. Players qualify between June 2027 and June 2028, through continental qualifying events, the Mixed Team World Cup and the world rankings.
How the Olympic events work
Olympic singles is a knockout. At Paris 2024 the lowest-ranked players began in a preliminary round, and the winners joined the top seeds in a main draw of 64. Every singles match was best of seven games, each game played to 11 points. Our guide to how scoring works explains games, points and deuce.
The Paris team events had 16 teams of three. Each tie was up to five matches, a doubles followed by singles, and the first team to three wins went through. Mixed doubles had 16 pairs, one from each country that qualified.
China won all five gold medals in Paris. Fan Zhendong beat Sweden's Truls Möregårdh in the men's singles final and Chen Meng beat her teammate Sun Yingsha in the women's. Wang Chuqin and Sun won the mixed doubles, and China won both team events.
What changes at LA 2028
In April 2025 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved the programme for Los Angeles. Men's and women's doubles return for the first time since 2004; they had been replaced by the team events at Beijing 2008. Mixed doubles stays, and there is a new mixed team event, in which each country's team has three men and three women. The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), the sport's governing body, has not yet set out how mixed team ties will be played.
Table tennis will be played at the Los Angeles Convention Center from 15 to 29 July 2028, starting the day after the opening ceremony.
If you are new to doubles, our guide to the doubles rules explains the order of play.
How many players can go
There are 172 places in Los Angeles, 86 for men and 86 for women. Each country, or National Olympic Committee (NOC) in Olympic terms, can send at most six players, three men and three women. Within that, a country can enter two players in each singles event, one pair in each doubles event and one mixed team. The countries ranked in the top eight for mixed doubles can enter a second mixed pair.
The limit of three players per gender matters most to the strongest nations. China usually has more players near the top of the world rankings than it can send, so it has to choose.
How countries qualify for the mixed team event
Sixteen teams will play in the mixed team event. Five places go to the winners of continental qualifying events, six to the best-placed teams at the 2027 Mixed Team World Cup, two through the mixed team world ranking of January 2028 and one to the host, the US, if it has not already qualified. The last two go to the countries with the most players already qualified.
A mixed team place also brings two singles places for each gender, which is why the team event shapes the rest of qualifying.
How players qualify for singles and doubles
Each doubles event has 16 pairs. They qualify through continental events, a world qualification event in spring 2028, the doubles world rankings of March 2028, a place for the host and a final allocation in May 2028.
In singles, 32 places in each event go to players from countries with a qualified mixed team. Another 21 go through continental qualifying events: six each for Asia and Europe, four each for Africa and the Americas and one for Oceania. Up to 10 more go to the highest-ranked players left on the world singles ranking of 5 June 2028, and the host has two places in each singles event.
Two universality places, one for men and one for women, go by invitation to countries that rarely qualify. Players must have appeared on an ITTF ranking list during the qualifying period to be eligible.
Our guide to how the world rankings work explains how those rankings are calculated.
Key dates
Qualifying begins with the European mixed team qualifier in Istanbul from 20 to 22 June 2027. The Mixed Team World Cup runs in late 2027, the continental singles qualifiers take place in January and February 2028, and the final places are confirmed in June 2028.
Olympic gold and the rankings
Winning Olympic singles gold is worth 2,000 world ranking points, the same as a world title or a Grand Smash. For most players the prestige counts for far more than the points.
Table tennis is also a Paralympic sport, and has been since the first Paralympic Games in Rome in 1960.
Your next steps
Read about the other great individual title in our guide to the World Championships, follow the qualifying events on our events calendar and see who is in contention on the world rankings.