ITTF awards 2027 and 2028 age-group championships to global hosts

The ITTF used its London summit to make a clear bet on scale: its next age-group world championships are headed to four hosts that signal growth, visibility and a bigger commercial reach for table tennis. On May 2, the ITTF Council confirmed Las Vegas for the 2027 World Masters Championships, Istanbul for 2028, Asunción for the 2027 World Youth Championships and Cappadocia for 2028.

For Masters players, the choice matters because this is no small hobby event. The category brings together thousands of players aged 40 and above, and the ITTF has spent the last cycle turning it into one of the sport’s biggest gatherings. Rome 2024 drew 6,100 athletes from 111 member associations, plus more than 2,500 accompanying persons and officials, for nearly 10,000 total attendees. The federation called it the largest table tennis event ever staged, and it also marked the first time Para table tennis was included in the World Masters Championships.

Las Vegas is being positioned as a first-time host with the Mandalay Bay Convention Center at the center of the pitch, offering more than 150 competition tables and direct hotel connectivity. Istanbul, meanwhile, is aiming even higher. The ITTF said the city wants to stage the largest Masters Championships in history, with capacity for more than 6,000 players and infrastructure that can scale further.

That is where the governance question gets interesting. The ITTF launched the bid process for the 2027 to 2028 World Masters and World Youth Championships in January 2026, and it recently decided to create an ITTF World Masters Team Championships, set to debut in 2027, with the individual Masters events in 2028. Taken together, those moves suggest the federation is not just chasing headline venues. It is trying to widen the Masters ladder, deepen participation and make the age-group side of the sport feel less like a sideline and more like a growth engine.

The youth side points in the same direction. The World Youth Championships, staged in U19 and U15 categories, are the ITTF’s flagship finale of the youth season, the place where the next senior names first become familiar. The 2025 edition was scheduled for November 23 to 30 at the BT Arena in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and the new cycle now sends that stage to Asunción in 2027 and Cappadocia in 2028.

Both cities already sit on the ITTF and WTT map, which helps explain their selection. The real test is whether these awards create more meaningful pathways for juniors and masters players, or simply package the same global circuit in more marketable destinations. The ITTF has chosen bigger rooms, bigger footprints and bigger ambition; now it has to prove that the sport grows with them.