World Team Table Tennis Championships 2026 & Major Events Strategy

I hope by now, you will have heard or read of the amazing news that we were successful in our bid to host the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships 2026 at Ovo Arena Wembley.

The awarding of the event followed many months of planning, negotiating and lobbying to bring the Championships to London in the centenary year for the ITTF.

More detail of how you can get involved, when you can buy tickets, volunteering opportunities etc will be announced in the weeks and months ahead; for now, we are working closely with the ITTF, UK Sport and the Greater London Authority, on the next stages of the formal contracts.

We are expecting to announce another event shortly – we are at contract stage – and I am very excited with how our wider strategy for major events is starting to take shape.

I’ve talked before about our event strategy being more than just a great Championships. They are about increasing the awareness and visibility of table tennis and inspiring a new generation of players, workforce and fans and securing partnerships and investment that can help develop table tennis at all levels. I very much look forward to you playing your part in this extraordinary opportunity.

Members’ Meeting

I was delighted to welcome around a dozen members to our most recent online Question Time Event which took place on Zoom recently. With subjects ranging from Membership and facilities to playing equipment and service laws, there was plenty of interesting debate and comments for myself, Chair Sandra Deaton and members of the Senior Leadership Team to listen and respond to.

New Board Directors Sally Hughes and Mark Boote were also on the call, listening in intently. A summary of the questions and answers can be found on our website here.

National Competition Review

Board will consider Phase III of the Competition Review at its meeting in September. This phase of the process will develop and add practical detail to the principles already agreed, and also consider the implementation timeframe and resource/support requirements.

It is anticipated that we will be able to share confirmation of next steps in October, together with FAQs and open web forums for members to aid understanding of how the competition programme will evolve in season 24/25 and beyond.

Rankings Updates

There’s been a number of enhancements to the functionality of the Rankings system over this summer. This has provided a brand-new look and feel on the website, as well as a new, fresh interface for members for Rankings when logged-in to their membership profile.

The public webpages have a new layout, with improved filter functionality, and the addition of each event name in players’ public match results. We think this new look and feel will improve the experience for members in searching for and looking at their ranking.

Full information on this can be found at https://www.tabletennisengland.co.uk/important-changes-to-competitions-and-rankings-for-2023-24-season/.

Area Network progress

The first drafts of the Area Local Delivery Plans, which will outline the key areas of work and the priorities for the Area Manager team until March 2024, will be released in the next six weeks. These plans, which will guide the work of the Local Organising Groups and start to support local development work across England aim to support the growth of players, coaches and clubs across focussed areas of the country.

The plans will also start to identify the potential investment into table tennis from external partners. The Area Managers will be working with the local table tennis community to deliver on the key actions in these plans.

More information will follow when the plans are released which will also include more details on how plans link with counties and Area Manager support for counties where it is needed.

Local Organising Group members

Recruitment for Local Organising Group members in the North East, North West, West, South West, South East and London is now getting under way with the Area Manager and Area Chairs for these Areas starting to look for keen and knowledgeable people to support this work and support the delivery of the upcoming Local Delivery Plans. The recruitment to these groups will be a mixture of appointments and open recruitment to ensure we get the right skillsets on the group.

These members will be made up of a range of people from the table tennis community, key external partners and other external organisations that will be able to support our sport in these local areas. We will also be looking at Local Organising Groups playing a key role in supporting and developing our Level the Table strategy, with Women and Girls, disability and ethnically diverse communities being represented, and this work being driven through the Groups.

Look out for more information coming out, particularly the recruitment packs on our website, newsletters and social media channels.

Performance

I am delighted to announce another step forward in our strategy towards our intent to achieve world-class medal success.

After an amazing application process the Pathway Development Centre application has now concluded with a panel of six selecting four clubs to be PDCs. The announcement of PDC sites has been communicated and can be found on our website.

As we seek to change the way in which we offer coach education, a working group from around our wonderful table tennis community has been created to help shape the exciting opportunity we have in this space. Coaching will be something we can all get excited about as we develop a pathway that helps us realise our intentions of Olympic medal success.

The England European youth team saw progression from last year with two fifth-place finishes from an England perspective in the under-19 mixed doubles and under-15 boys’ singles. Congratulations to Anna Hursey in the GB potential squad who achieved a bronze medal in the under 19 girls’ singles.

Governance

Board Recruitment

The recruitment for the Chair of the Board is under way with the deadline for applications on Friday 18 August 2023. Interviews will be taking place in mid-September.

The vacant Appointed Director position will remain vacant until the appointment of the Chair of Table Tennis England when the Board will discuss the requirement of the role.

National Councillors

The position of National Council Chair is currently out for election by the current National Councillors and confirmation of the outcome will be announced, when it has been confirmed by the Returning Officer.

The closing date to appoint your National Councillor was 20 June and there are still a few counties that have not appointed their National Councillor, so if you haven’t sent in your appointment form it can be located here National Councillor Appointment Form.

People Committee

The Terms of Reference for the soon to be formed People Committee have been drafted and have been reviewed by the Governance & Risk Advisory Committee. The Committee will have people responsibilities delegated to it and will be chaired by Emma Sutherland, Head of People. We will be advertising for volunteers to be members of the Committee later in September with the first meeting intended to take place in October.

Membership

Thank you to everyone who has re-joined Table Tennis England for the 2023/24 season, with membership numbers currently up 13% on this time last year. Encouragingly, so far we have seen 1,643 brand-new members and people coming back to the sport after having one or more seasons out. The new Direct Debit option is proving popular, with many of you moving over to this easier payment option.

Thank you also to all those who have made a voluntary donation alongside your membership renewal. Since launching this initiative, members have donated nearly £10,000, every penny of which has gone towards the development of the sport. To read more about this, click here.

TT Leagues

TT Leagues continues to develop and in addition to its use by Local Leagues, it will again be used in the forthcoming season for fixtures & results management in all British League, County Championships and NCL/NJL competitions. The updated on-line entry system for British League has again streamlined the entry process and for clubs. This year we have provided clubs with additional flexibility on how they pay their entry fees.

The main development over the summer break has been the development of new competition formats for knockout and Handicap competitions. These formats have been developed at the request of Local Leagues. They wanted to be able to manage the full range of their competitions on their League websites. These new formats mean League members will be able to view the detailed results of all competitions run by the League – not just the main league competition.

Final testing on the new formats is taking place this week and we expect them to be available on TT Leagues websites shortly. They will be supported by Video Tutorials and direct support via the Help Desk.

Staff

We said goodbye to Craig Bryant on 31 July, Kerry Coombs on 4 August and Claire Warner on 1 September and wish them every success for the future.

We are delighted to welcome the following new staff members:

Imran Ahmed joined us on 15 August in the role of Customer Service & Ranking Administrator.

Sophie Storey will be joining us on 11 September as Competition & Events Support Officer

Claire Friend will be joining us on 12 September as our Safeguarding and Disciplinary Officer.

Our open vacancies are shared on the TTE website with full details of the role and responsibilities. We advertise vacancies across various job boards and LinkedIn. Please share them to your networks as we are always interested in applications from great people!

Best wishes
Adrian Christy