Table Tennis England honors volunteers at Wembley awards ceremony

Table Tennis England turned a week built around elite international table tennis into a tribute to the people who keep the sport alive in clubs, leagues, schools and coaching networks across England. At Wembley, the governing body honored winners and runners-up in the Cloudathlete Pride of Table Tennis Awards, a recognition program aimed at the volunteers whose time, energy, commitment and expertise help others enjoy and achieve in the game.

The awards were presented in 12 categories, including the Volunteer of the Year and Young Volunteer of the Year prizes, and Table Tennis England said the scheme exists to recognize valuable, outstanding and often unseen contributions made over the past 12 months. The shortlisted nominees were first revealed on 8 April 2026, with area-stage winners announced earlier in the month before the national celebration brought the final group together on the sport’s biggest stage in England.

That stage was the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals London 2026 Presented by ACN, staged from 28 April to 10 May across Copper Box Arena and OVO Arena Wembley. Table Tennis England described the centenary edition, marking 100 years since the first World Championships in 1926, as the biggest Worlds ever staged, with 128 teams competing in London and China taking both the men’s and women’s titles.

The awards were not treated as a stand-alone ceremony. Shortlisted nominees were invited to a special reception at Brent Civic Centre, then into the OVO Arena Wembley to watch England’s women face France in Stage 1a of the team event. The format underlined the point of the day: volunteer work is not a side story to elite table tennis, but the infrastructure that makes competition, development and participation possible in the first place.

Cloudathlete sponsored the awards for a second year, extending its support for grassroots and participation sport. By placing the Pride of Table Tennis Awards inside the centenary World Championships, Table Tennis England gave club officials, coaches, technical officers and young volunteers the same Wembley backdrop usually reserved for the sport’s stars, and made a clear statement about what keeps English table tennis functioning when the cameras move on.