International Table Tennis Federation

The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) was formed in 1926, with nine founding members: Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, India, Sweden, and Wales. The first World Table Tennis Championships were staged that same year, in London, Great Britain, with events for men and women. Table Tennis would only make its Olympic début as a full medal sport in 1988 at Seoul (with events for both genders).

Table tennis has also been included in the programme of the Youth Summer Olympics since the competition’s inception, at Singapore 2010, with boys, girls, and mixed events.

The ITTF also oversees Para Table Tennis, which had its first World Championships in 1990, in Assen, Netherlands. By then, Paralympic Table Tennis had already been part of the Summer Paralympics programme for 30 years, with the first appearance at its inaugural edition, at Rome 1960.

The federation has also entered the eSports world, with the first-ever ITTF Esports Table Tennis World Championships staged in 2024, in Helsingborg, Sweden.

As of January 2026, the ITTF has 227 Member Associations. The federation’s headquarters is located in Lausanne, Switzerland, and its current president is Sweden’s Petra Sörling.