Vic International Open marks 41st edition with historic September return
Vic’s 41st Open returns Sept. 5-6 at Castell d’en Planes, with past winners like Álvaro ROBLES, NI Xia Lian and 300-plus players behind its staying power.
The Vic International Open will return for its 41st edition on September 5 and 6, 2026, at the Castell d’en Planes Sports Hall in Vic, Barcelona. That schedule puts the event back on a crowded European table tennis calendar, but Vic has earned its place by staying busy, international and relevant.
The tournament began in 1986 as a single men’s singles competition, and Josep M. PALÉS won the first title. ETTU says the women’s singles was added in the second edition, with Barbara LIPPENS taking that inaugural crown, a detail that shows how quickly the event moved beyond a one-draw local stop and into a broader competition. Over time, that expansion has turned Vic into one of the most durable fixtures in Spanish table tennis.
The 40th edition underlined that reach. It was scheduled for September 13 and 14, 2025, at the same Castell d’en Planes venue, and more than 300 players competed at the Vic Sports Pavilion. Spain’s Álvaro ROBLES won the men’s title and Ukraine’s Natalya PROSVIRNINA took the women’s title, a clean reminder that Vic can still attract winners who matter on the wider European scene, not just familiar domestic names.
The list of past champions is the stronger evidence of the tournament’s standing. ETTU’s June 2026 feature includes NI Xia Lian, Félix LEBRUN and ROBLES among the winners, which is not the profile of a nostalgia event drifting on reputation. It is a field that has stayed connected to the sport’s present tense, with players from different generations and different levels of the game treating Vic as worth the trip.
ETTU has described the Vic Open as one of the longest-running and most inclusive table tennis events on the calendar, and that label fits the numbers. In 2025, the federation noted that all categories except the Catalan Open held international status, giving the event a reach that extends beyond a single local draw. That structure matters in Spain, where a tournament like Vic helps connect club players, regional competition and the broader European circuit.
After four decades, Vic looks like more than a legacy stop. The annual return to the same venue, the steady international field and the mix of elite names and deep entries all point to a tournament that still does real work for the sport in Osona, Catalonia and the wider Barcelona area.
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