WTT touts star-packed United States Smash 2026 field in Los Angeles

WTT is setting up the United States Smash as more than a marquee stop. In the Greater Los Angeles area, the tour will stage a 10-day, $1,550,000 event at the Ontario Convention Center from 26 June to 5 July, and it is using the draw to frame the tournament as a pressure test for table tennis in the American market.

The timing is part of the pitch. June will be a blockbuster month, with two Contender events and one Star Contender leading into the Smash, a run that will sharpen ranking races before the sport’s biggest regular-stage event arrives. General ticket sales opened on 22 May at 9:00 AM Los Angeles time, another sign that WTT is pushing the tournament from concept to local sell-through after the inaugural United States Smash in Las Vegas in 2025.

The field gives the event its weight. On the men’s side, WTT is spotlighting Wang Chuqin, Truls Moregard, Tomokazu Harimoto, Felix Lebrun, Lin Shidong, Hugo Calderano and Lin Yun-Ju. On the women’s side, the headline names include Zhu Yuling, Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu, Miwa Harimoto, Chen Xingtong, Sabine Winter and Hina Hayata. The doubles draws add even more of the sport’s recognizable pairings, with Felix Lebrun and Alexis Lebrun in men’s doubles, Lin Shidong and Huang Youzheng also in the mix, Wang Manyu and Kuai Man among the women’s combinations, and mixed doubles entries that include Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin, Lim Jonghoon and Shin Yubin, plus the Singapore Smash champions Hugo Calderano and Bruna Takahashi.

That star power matters because a Grand Smash sits at the top of WTT’s hierarchy. The International Table Tennis Federation has said Grand Smashes belong alongside the World Championships and Olympic Games at the summit of the rankings pyramid, with winners earning 2000 points. It has also described them as the sport’s highest-prize-money events, which explains why the elite treat them as must-play stages rather than ordinary tour stops.

For WTT, the return to California is the real story. Los Angeles is being asked to carry the next phase of the U.S. push after Las Vegas gave the United States Smash its first footprint last year. If the field sells the spectacle and the venue fills, the event could move American table tennis from novelty into a genuine growth market, with the United States Smash becoming a permanent marker on the sport’s power map.