The World Table Tennis Championships first took place in 1926 in London, England. However, since the year 2000, the Championship has been split into two separate competitions.

Team events are now held in even numbered years, whilst individual events (singles and doubles) are held in odd numbered years.

So 2021 is the year for the individual events to be contested.

The 2021 World Table Tennis Championship events were...

• Men's Singles - for the St Bride Vase
• Women's Singles - for the Geist Prize
• Men's Doubles - for the Iran Cup
• Women's Doubles - for the W. J. Pope Trophy
• Mixed Doubles - for the Heydusek Prize

The St. Bride Vase was donated by C.Corti Woodcock in 1929, a member of the exclusive St. Bride Table Tennis Club in London, in honour of Fred Perry winning the title at the 1929 World Championships in Budapest.

The Geist Prize was donated in 1931 by Dr. Gaspar Geist, President of the Hungarian TTA.

The Iran Cup was presented at the 1947 World Championships by the Shah of Iran.

The W.J. Pope Trophy was donated in 1948 by W.J. Pope of England who was the ITTF Honorary General Secretary.

The Heydusek Cup was donated in 1948 by Zdenek Heydusek, Secretary of the Czechoslovakia Association.

The following equipment was used at the 2021 World Championships...

• Tables - Double Happiness (DHS) Rainbow blue (show courts) and T1223 blue (regular courts)
• Net and Posts - Double Happiness (DHS) P118 blue (show courts) and P145 blue (regular courts)
• Balls - Butterfly R40+ 3 star (White plastic with seam)
• Flooring - Enlio royal blue

Players could only be entered into the competition by their National Association.

The event was open to Member Associations satisfying the following conditions...

• Associations whose membership subscriptions have been paid up to and including those for 2020.
• Nominated players have to be eligible to represent their Member Associations according to Regulation 4.1.3 in the ITTF Handbook.

Number of Entries

Each Association could enter a maximum of 3 men and 3 women in each singles events - with the exception of those Associations with a player in the top 100 of the World Ranking (who will be allocated one extra place) and a player in the top 20 of the World Ranking (who will be allocated one further extra place). This is known as the 3+1+1 rule.

Each Association could enter a maximum of 4 players for men's doubles, 4 players for women's doubles and four players for Mixed Doubles (two men and two women) with a maximum of two combined pairs with another Association per doubles event.

The first round of Men's Singles and Women's Singles had 128 places and the first round of Men's Doubles, Women's Doubles and Mixed Doubles had 64 places.

Singles events had 32 seeded players and doubles events had 16 seeded pairs.

All singles matches were best of 7 games and doubles matches were best of 5 games.

Draws

The draws took place on Sunday 21 November.

Seeded players were drawn into appropriate positions according to Regulation 3.6.2.3 in the ITTF Handbook.

All other players/pairs were then drawn at random into the remaining 96 positions for singles and 48 positions for doubles.

Players of the same Association were separated according to Regulation 3.6.3.1 in the ITTF Handbook (only in the first round of the draw but not in further rounds).

The ranking list which was used for seeding and for the draws was the ITTF Table Tennis World Ranking published on 16 November 2021.

The previous individual World Table Tennis Championships were held in Budapest, Hungary from 21-28 April 2019 and the winners were...

2019 Men's Singles World Champion

Ma Long (China)

2019 Women's Singles World Champion

Liu Shiwen (China)

2019 Men's Doubles World Champions

Ma Long and Wang Chuqin (China)

2019 Women's Doubles World Champions

Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu (China)

2019 Mixed Doubles World Champions

Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen (China)

Get all the results here...

• Men's Singles Event Results here
• Women's Singles Event Results here
• Men's Doubles Event Results here
• Women's Doubles Event Results here
• Mixed Doubles Event Results here

Use the links below for results of previous World Championships.