LA28 Para table tennis schedule delivers historic gender parity milestone

Para table tennis is heading into Los Angeles 2028 with a bigger draw and a cleaner competitive balance than it has ever had at a Paralympic Games. LA28’s newly unveiled schedule places the sport at the Los Angeles Convention Centre from 16 to 26 August 2028 and expands the medal program to 32 events, split into 15 men’s events, 15 women’s events and two mixed events.

The headline change is not just the size of the program. LA28 says the extra women’s medal event comes from splitting a women’s classification that was previously combined at Paris 2024, creating a new WS1 women’s event for the most impaired wheelchair class. That adjustment gives para table tennis equal numbers of male and female participants in the Paralympic field for the first time, a milestone that changes the look of the sport as much as the calendar.

The competition format adds to that sense of elevation. LA28 says para table tennis will be staged across six sessions, with two preliminary sessions on Day 9 and four finals sessions across Days 10 to 12. Each finals session will feature one men’s and one women’s medal event, a setup that keeps the sport in the spotlight across the final stretch of the Games. The event will share a downtown multi-sport setting with wheelchair fencing, Para judo, Para taekwondo and boccia, turning the Los Angeles Convention Centre into one of the Paralympics’ busiest hubs.

The broader case for the sport is already visible in Paris. The International Paralympic Committee says para table tennis drew 615 hours of broadcast coverage at Paris 2024, behind only Para athletics and Para swimming, and that the Games produced 12,941 total hours of coverage. Paris also marked the first time all 22 Para sports had some amount of live coverage, underscoring how broadcastable the Paralympic product has become when the right sports are placed in the right window.

LA28 is building on that momentum with a return to American soil for para table tennis for the first time since Atlanta 1996. Paris 2024 featured 280 players across 31 events, and the Los Angeles program adds another layer of reach at a venue designed for visibility inside a broader Games plan built around proximity. LA28 says all competition venues will sit within a 35-mile radius and the Paralympic Village will be based at UCLA, with the 2028 Games using a single village for the first time since Rio 2016.

The parity theme is stretching beyond Los Angeles, too. The 2026 World Para Table Tennis Championships in Pattaya, Thailand, will feature 165 men and 165 women from 23 to 29 November 2026, the first time that world championship event has matched male and female athlete numbers. LA28 now carries that same trajectory into the Paralympic stage, giving para table tennis not just more events, but a stronger claim to long-term growth, visibility and legacy.