The World Table Tennis Championships are run by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and are held every year, in two forms. In odd-numbered years they are the individual championships, with men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles and mixed doubles. In even-numbered years they are the team championships, with a men's and a women's team event. Players reach them through continental qualifying events and the world rankings, and a world title is the biggest prize in the sport after Olympic gold.
A hundred years old
The first World Championships were held in London in December 1926, the same year the ITTF was founded there. The event had been planned as a European championship and was renamed by the new federation. Hungary won the men's team title and Roland Jacobi, also of Hungary, the first men's singles.
For decades, individual and team events were played together. Since 2003 they have been split, which is why the championships now alternate.
The Worlds are not part of the World Table Tennis (WTT) circuit, the professional tour of Grand Smashes and other events. They belong to the ITTF. Our guide to the ITTF and WTT explains how the two fit together.
The individual championships
The individual Worlds are a straight knockout. At Doha in May 2025 the singles draws had 128 places, with 32 seeded players, and the doubles and mixed doubles had 64 pairs, with 16 seeded. Singles matches are best of seven games; doubles are best of five.
In Doha, China's Wang Chuqin won the men's singles, beating Brazil's Hugo Calderano 4-1 in the final. Sun Yingsha kept her women's title, beating her teammate Wang Manyu in a seven-game final.
Winning a singles title is worth 2,000 world ranking points, as much as a Grand Smash or the Olympics. Our guide to how the world rankings work explains how those points add up.
The team championships
In team years, each tie between two nations is played as up to five singles matches, and the first team to win three wins the tie. Each team uses three players. The order is fixed in advance, so the top players can meet twice, and each match is best of five games.
The 2026 team championships in London were the biggest yet, with 64 teams in each event, up from 40. They began with 16 groups of four. The top seven teams and the host nation, England, played in two groups that decided only seeding; the other 56 teams fought for 24 more places in a knockout draw of 32.
China won both titles, beating Japan in each final. The men won 3-0 for a record 24th world team title, and the women came from 2-1 down to win 3-2. England's men reached the last 16, where they lost 3-2 to Brazil after coming back from 2-0 down.
The trophies
Every world champion receives a gold medal, and each event has its own trophy, most of them decades old. The men's team champions win the Swaythling Cup and the women's team the Corbillon Cup. In the individual events, the men's singles champion takes the St Bride Vase, played for since 1929, and the women's singles champion the Geist Prize. The men's doubles winners receive the Iran Cup, the women's doubles winners the WJ Pope Trophy and the mixed doubles winners the Heydusek Cup.
How players qualify for the individual Worlds
Each national association can enter only a limited number of players in each event, so even China, with most of the world's top players, has to leave some at home. The rest of the field comes through the world rankings and continental qualifying tournaments.
For the 2027 championships in Astana, the ITTF ran qualifying events on every continent in the autumn of 2026, in Ballarat for Oceania, Ljubljana for Europe, Tangier for Africa, Lima for the Americas and Tashkent for Asia. Players who win through take their places alongside the highest-ranked players. The ITTF publishes the full rules for each edition on its World Championships documents page.
How teams qualify
For London 2026, 52 teams in each event qualified through their continental championships: 16 from Asia, 16 from Europe, eight from Africa, eight from the Americas and four from Oceania. Another 11 qualified on the world team ranking of November 2025, and the host nation had the last place.
Our guide to how team matches work covers the team format in more detail.
Where the next ones are
The 2027 individual championships are in Astana, Kazakhstan, from 22 to 30 May 2027. The 2028 team championships go to Fukuoka, Japan, and the 2029 individual championships to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Your next steps
See what is coming up on our events calendar, read about the other ITTF title in our guide to table tennis at the Olympics, and check how the players heading for Astana stand on the world rankings.