Table tennis has three big invitation events below the World Championships and the Olympics. The ITTF Men's and Women's World Cup, usually in late March or early April, is a singles event for 48 players in each draw. The ITTF Mixed Team World Cup, at the end of the year, is a team event in which men and women play for the same country. The WTT Finals, in December, bring together the 16 best men and women of the WTT season. The two World Cups belong to the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF); the Finals belong to World Table Tennis (WTT), its commercial arm.
If the difference between those two bodies is new to you, read ITTF and WTT: who runs table tennis? first.
The singles World Cup
The Men's World Cup was first held in Hong Kong in 1980, and the Women's World Cup followed, also in Hong Kong, in 1996. After a three-year break it returned in 2024 in Macao with a draw of 48 players, up from 16, and Macao has staged it every year since. The men's champion receives the Evans Cup and the women's champion the Hammarlund Cup.
Places are shared out by continent and ranking. The semi-finalists at each of the five ITTF Continental Cups, played in February, qualify, as do the reigning world champion and the under-19 world champion. The rest of the field comes from the world rankings, and the host can nominate players if none has qualified.
How the World Cup is played
The 48 players are split into 16 groups of three, and players from the same country are kept apart. Each group is a round robin, meaning everyone plays everyone, and only the group winner goes through. In 2024 and 2025 group matches were exactly four games, so a 2-2 draw was possible; in 2026 they became the best of five.
The 16 group winners then play a straight knockout from the last 16, with every match the best of seven games. The winners earn 1,500 world ranking points. The 2025 edition had a prize fund of US$1m.
At the 2026 World Cup, played at the Galaxy Arena in Macao from 30 March to 5 April, Wang Chuqin won his first title, beating Sora Matsushima 4-3 in the final. Sun Yingsha beat Wang Manyu 4-1 for her third women's title in a row. In 2025 Hugo Calderano of Brazil beat Lin Shidong 4-1 in the men's final.
The Mixed Team World Cup
The Mixed Team World Cup was first held in Chengdu, China, in December 2023, and Chengdu has hosted every edition since. It succeeded the old men's and women's Team World Cups, last held in Tokyo in 2019. China have won all three editions so far, beating South Korea 8-1 in the deciding tie in 2023 and Japan 8-1 in the 2025 final.
A tie between two countries is made up of five matches, played in this order: mixed doubles, women's singles, men's singles, then women's doubles and men's doubles. The captain of the lower-ranked team chooses the order of the last two. Each match is always exactly three games, so it finishes 3-0 or 2-1, and the games add up across the tie. The first team to win eight games wins.
That system means every game counts. A team that loses the mixed doubles 2-1 still has two games on the board, and a strong singles player can swing a tie on their own. Players who play the mixed doubles cannot play singles, and nobody plays more than two matches.
The 2026 edition starts at the end of November, again in Chengdu. The next one matters more: the best-placed teams at the 2027 Mixed Team World Cup will take six of the 16 places in the new mixed team event at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. Our guide to Olympic qualification explains the rest of that route.
The WTT Finals
The WTT Finals replaced the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals, which ended in 2020. The first edition, called the WTT Cup Finals, was held in Singapore in 2021. Hong Kong now hosts it, and the 2026 Finals take place there in December.
Only WTT results count towards qualification, so the World Cup, the World Championships and continental events do not. In 2025 the standings took a player's four best Grand Smash results, four best WTT Champions results and six best results from the Contender Series. The top 16 men and women play a straight knockout, every match the best of seven games, and the winners earn 1,500 ranking points. Eight mixed doubles pairs also take part, in two groups of four, with the top two in each group going into the semi-finals.
In December 2025 Tomokazu Harimoto beat Truls Moregard 4-2 in the men's final and Wang Manyu beat Kuai Man 4-2 in the women's. South Korea's Lim Jonghoon and Shin Yubin won the mixed doubles.
Why these events matter
Each one is worth 1,500 ranking points to a singles winner, a level below only the Olympics, the World Championships and the Grand Smashes, and the fields are small and strong, so there are no easy early rounds. The World Cup also rewards continental form, which gives players from outside Asia and Europe a route to a top event. Our guide to how the world rankings work shows how those points add up.
Your next steps
Find the dates for the Mixed Team World Cup and the WTT Finals on our events pages, then read how team matches work to see how the other team formats compare.