Professional table tennis is not only a tour of individual tournaments. Most leading players are also paid by clubs, and the strongest national leagues are in Germany, China, Japan and France. They run alongside the WTT events, usually at weekends or in short blocks, and each has its own rules for how a team match is played and how the title is decided.
If you are new to team contests, our guide to how team matches work explains the basic idea: a club puts out a small squad, they play a series of individual matches, and the first side to a majority wins.
Germany: the Tischtennis Bundesliga
The men's Tischtennis Bundesliga, usually shortened to TTBL, is Europe's best-known domestic league. The top division began in the 1966-67 season, and since 2010 it has been run by its own company, TTBL Sport GmbH, owned by an association of the first-division clubs. The 2026-27 season has the same 12 clubs as the year before, including Borussia Düsseldorf, 1. FC Saarbrücken, Werder Bremen and Ochsenhausen. It began on 16 August.
A TTBL match has four singles and then a doubles, each the best of five games, and the first team to three wins takes the match. That means a match can end 3-0 after three singles, or go all the way to a deciding doubles at 2-2.
The title used to be settled by play-offs. From 2026 the top four teams after the regular season meet at a Final4 weekend, with the semi-finals on the first day and the final on the second. The first one was held in Frankfurt on 30 and 31 May 2026, and Saarbrücken beat Düsseldorf 3-1 in the final to complete a treble. Every TTBL match is shown live on Dyn, a German subscription streaming service.
China: the Super League
China's Super League is where the Chinese national team players compete for their provinces and sponsors. It was reformed for 2026. There are 10 men's teams and eight women's, and every team must register at least one player under 19.
The format now copies the mixed team event. A match has five rubbers in the order doubles, singles, singles, doubles, singles. Each rubber is exactly three games, so it ends 3-0 or 2-1, and the first team to win eight of the 15 possible games wins. A team uses four to seven players, and nobody plays more than twice.
The 2026 regular season was played in two blocks in July and August, in Dalian and Xiong'an. The top four men's and women's teams go to the finals in Guangzhou from 25 to 27 December, played as straight knockout.
Japan: the T.League
Japan's T.League began in 2018, with separate men's and women's divisions. In 2026-27 there are six teams in each, including Kinoshita Meister Tokyo and Okayama Rivets for the men and Nippon Life Red Elf for the women. The season opened on 25 July 2026 in Hsinchu, Taiwan, the first time the league had started a season abroad, and runs to play-offs the following March.
The T.League has its own rules designed to keep matches short and close. The doubles is played first, over the best of three games, and the singles are the best of five. The last game of every individual match starts at 6-6 rather than 0-0. If the team match reaches 2-2, a single-game victory match decides it.
In the play-offs, the second and third teams meet in a semi-final, and the winner plays the league leaders in the final. In March 2026 both rounds were played in Tokyo.
France and the rest of Europe
France's top men's division, Pro A, is one of the oldest national leagues, with champions going back to 1932. Since 2025 the title has been decided by a single final. In May 2026 SPO Rouen beat GV Hennebont, the regular-season winners, 3-2 at the Kindarena in Rouen to become French champions for the first time.
Poland, Spain, the Czech Republic and Denmark also had clubs in the last 16 of the 2026-27 men's Champions League, alongside the German and French sides. The best European clubs meet in the ETTU Champions League, which runs across the season with home-and-away rounds and a Final Four in May.
Why club matches matter
League results do not count towards the world rankings, which come only from international events. But they are where many leading players spend most of their weekends, and a club match can bring together players who rarely meet on the WTT tour.
The leagues also fit around the international calendar. Our guide to the season, month by month shows when the WTT events fall, and so when each league fills the gaps.
Your next steps
Read our guide to the European Champions League to see how the best clubs from these leagues meet each other. If you want to play in a team yourself, see how table tennis is run in England.