30 teams qualify for English Leagues Cup finals, three champions return

The ELCC finals arrived with more depth and more familiar faces. Thirty teams from 23 leagues qualified for the last stage, six more than the previous season, and three reigning champions were back to defend their trophies, a sign that England’s oldest domestic table tennis competition still runs on both continuity and reach.

Table Tennis England has long treated the ELCC as the backbone of its league scene, and the structure explains why so many clubs can stay in the hunt. The 2025/26 series featured four trophies, the Wiltmott Cup, JM Rose Bowl, Carter Cup and Bromfield Trophy, and leagues were allowed to enter as many teams as they wished in each event. That openness helped produce a broad finals field, while the history behind it still carries weight. The Wiltmott Cup was first contested in 1935, the JM Rose Bowl dates to 1939, and Table Tennis England’s archive now stretches back through every edition of Table Tennis and Table Tennis News from 1935 to 2010.

The strongest form in qualifying came from the pairings that refused to blink. Central London’s Derek Abrefa and Oleh Biletskyi, the 2024/25 winners, came through Zone 7 without dropping a match. Norwich matched that standard in Zone 5, where Chris Cockburn and Frederic Wilke also completed a clean run. Zone 8 was tighter and messier, with a three-way countback settled by head-to-head results before Southampton edged Reading and Central London B to advance on a chain of 3-2 results. Those margins mattered: in a competition built on team pressure, one scoreline can redraw the bracket.

Derby remained the clearest title threat across the draw. It will have a chance to go for three trophies, and in the senior women’s JM Rose Bowl it defended with Catherine Lv now partnered by Naomi Coker. Norwich, Cambridge and Plymouth also secured places in that event, giving the final stage a mix of proven names and challengers trying to break into the top tier. In the junior boys’ Carter Cup, defending champions Wembley & Harrow returned with Oscar Nikolli, Janak Shah and Nishil Shah, a reminder that continuity still wins matches when the pressure rises.

The Bromfield Trophy told a different story. It had no qualifying stage at all, leaving Derby in line for a fourth straight title and only five rivals standing between it and another run of control. The wider picture is clear: Derby still looks like the standard-bearer, Central London and Norwich look sharp enough to keep pace, and the rest of the field is pushing hard enough to keep the finals from settling into a script.