London Hosts Centenary World Team Table Tennis Championships Opening Stage

Copper Box Arena had the feel of a championship that understood the assignment. The first day of play in the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals London 2026 brought noise, tension and enough early drama to make the centenary look like a living event rather than a ceremonial one, exactly 100 years after London first hosted the World Championships in 1926.

Stage 1B got underway on April 28 at Copper Box Arena in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, with the opening stage running through May 1 before the action moves to OVO Arena Wembley for the knockout rounds from May 2 to May 10. The format gives the tournament a clean, modern shape: 64 men’s teams and 64 women’s teams are split into early stages, with the top seven ranked nations plus the host team placed into Stage 1a and the teams ranked 9 through 64 drawn into 14 groups of four in Stage 1B. Group winners go straight to the Main Draw at Wembley, and that clarity helps the whole event play like a bracket fans can track rather than a fog of fixtures.

That matters because the field is stacked. The International Table Tennis Federation said 19 of the top 20 men and the majority of the top 20 women were in London, chasing the Swaythling Cup and the Corbillon Cup in a tournament it has framed as the sport’s premier team event. Petra Sörling called London the birthplace of both the ITTF and the World Championships, and the centenary return gave the opening stage a strong sense of history without turning it into nostalgia.

The first day also delivered the kind of results that travel well beyond the arena. Greece had to work through a scare against Algeria in Group 6 before closing out a 3-1 win, with Ioannis Sgouropoulos giving Greece an early lead, Mehdi Bouloussa striking back for Algeria, and Panagiotis Gionis steadying the match after a difficult passage. Madagascar edged Mongolia 3-2 in a tighter thriller, with Fabio Rakotoarimanana holding his nerve in the deciding match. The biggest upset came in Group 5, where Spain beat Slovenia 3-1 and Alvaro Robles beat Darko Jorgic in a five-game decider after Spain had already established control.

That is what made the Copper Box opener feel like a useful model for the second century of the Worlds. The staging was compact, the stakes were obvious, and the early matches produced clear storylines that could be understood in a single watch. On the women’s side, DPR Korea’s 3-0 win over Poland in Group 9 added another reminder that the centenary draw is built for shocks, not ceremony. London 2026 opened with the sport’s past in the room and its future on the table, and the first session already looked ready for a bigger audience.