How many countries have been world table tennis champions? Which country was the last country to deny China? How many times has England ruled the world?
Read on for the answers to these and other questions as we continue the countdown to the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships London 2026.
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With 64 women’s and 64 men’s teams competing at London 2026, the tournament has come a long way since seven countries took part in the first championships in the same city in 1926.
Seven teams took part in the first men’s team championships: Austria, Czechoslovakia, England, Germany, Hungary, India and Wales.
It was Hungary who came out on top and launched an early dominance in the men’s Swaythling Cup, winning the first five editions in 1926, 1928, 1929, 1930 and 1931. In both 1929 and 1931 they were victorious in their capital Budapest. 1929 was also notable as the first appearance of the immortal Viktor Barna, who won a total of 41 World Cup medals, 22 of them gold, in individual and team events for Hungary and England, where he settled just before World War II.
Hungary dominated the pre-war years, also winning in 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1938 – the last two also in London.
Only Czechoslovakia in 1932 and 1939, the US in 1937 and Austria in 1936 saw action before war intervened – after the 1939 championships had already been held.
In the case of Austria and the USA, these triumphs remain their only wins in the Swaythling Cup. The Austrian team included the great Richard Bergmann, who would go on to represent England after coming to these shores to escape the Nazis and won a total of 22 championship medals, seven of which were gold.
Czechoslovakia would win four more: in 1947, 1948 in London, 1950 and 1951.
It took a few years to achieve gender parity, and the very first women’s team champions were crowned in Paris in 1934, when it was Germany who first lifted the Corbillon Cup.
Czechoslovakia were the next to come out on top: they won the title in 1935, 1936 (in their capital Prague) and 1938, while Germany achieved their second victory in 1939 in Cairo.
Among the Czech victories, 1937 was notable when the US won the Corbillon Cup, making it the first time the same country lifted both trophies in the same year.
The US was the only one of the three countries to have won the Corbillon Cup early on and tasted success again, taking their second and final women’s title in 1949 in Stockholm. It is perhaps remarkable that Germany’s victory in 1939 remains their last, while their men never won the greatest prize.
When table tennis resumed after the war, it was Paris that hosted the next World Championships, in 1947, and England’s name was added to the roster of Corbillon Cup winners as the side of Elizabeth Blackbourn, Vera Dace, Peggy Franks and non-playing captain Margaret Knott climbed to the top step of the podium.
The following year in London they defended the title on home turf when Franks and Dace (now under her married name Thomas) returned once again alongside Elizabeth (Betty) Steventon, Dora Beregi and Knott as NPC.
Romania were the next country to join the ‘World Champions Club’ as their women won the Corbillon Cup in both 1950 and 1951. They would win the Cup three more times in the 1950s for a total of five titles, led by the legendary Angelica Rozeanu, who won a total of seventeen world titles.
The following year, history was made in Bombay when Japan became the first Asian country to win a world title – again in the Corbillon Cup. They won again in 1954 and then four times in a row from 1957 to 1963, as they and Romania shared eleven consecutive titles.
Back in the Swaythling Cup and in 1953 England’s proudest achievement was their first and only men’s title – the winning line-up was Richard Bergmann, Brian Kennedy, Johnny Leach, Aubrey Simons and Adrian Haydon as NPC.
England were followed by Japan, who won both titles at Wembley in 1954 – beginning a run of five consecutive men’s titles. Japan also won both titles in 1957 in Stockholm and 1959 in Dortmund.
In 1961, the championships were held in China for the first time, in Beijing. And although Japan retained the women’s title, the Swaythling Cup was won by the host nations for the first time.
They retained the title in Prague in 1963 and completed a hat-trick in Ljubljana in 1965, the same year their female counterparts won their first title.
That did not herald a dominant era, as China won only one of the next eight world titles on offer. Japan won both in Stockholm in 1967 and the men’s in Munich in 1969 – but there was a new name at the Corbillon Cup that year as the Soviet Union won for the first and only time.
China and Japan won the men’s and women’s titles respectively in 1971 in Nagoya, before two new winners were crowned in Sarajevo in 1973, Sweden winning the first of their five men’s titles and Korea Republic (South Korea) their only women’s title.
Chinese dominance really began in Calcutta in 1975 and at the next six World Cups after that the only time they did not take gold was when Hungarian men won in Pyongyang in 1979 – the last of their 12 championship-winning sides.
Their spell was broken in spectacular fashion in the Swaythling Cup as Sweden claimed a hat-trick of men’s titles in 1989, 91 and 93, the last of which on home soil in Gothenburg. It was a team whose names rolled off the tongues of everyone who followed the sport: Appelgren, Karlsson, Lindh, Persson and of course Waldner.
In addition to the second of those triumphs, a Unified Korea team won gold in the Corbillon Cup in Chiba City in 1991 – one of the iconic World Cup moments and later immortalized in the film As One.
From 1995 onwards, China’s stranglehold on the Swaythling and Corbillon Cups has been total – almost. As of 1995, only one men’s and one women’s team have broken the monopoly.
It was Sweden’s fifth and final men’s title in 2000 in Kuala Lumpur, when Karlsson, Persson and Waldner scored one last hurray.
And the only time this century that a country other than China has won the Corbillon Cup was in 2010, when Singapore topped the podium – also the last time a ‘new’ country won one of the world’s top team table tennis trophies.
In total, eight different countries have won the Swaythling Cup and 11 the Corbillon Cup, with China leading the way with 23 of each. Fourteen different countries have won one or the other, and five – including England – have tasted victory in both. What does London 2026 have in store?
A century of champions
Swaythling Cup (men’s team)
China: 23 wins (1961, 1963, 1965, 1971, 1975, 1977, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2022, 2024)
Hungary: 12 victories (1926, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1933 (January), 1933 (December), 1935, 1938, 1949, 1952, 1979)
Japan: 7 wins (1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1967, 1969)
Czechoslovakia: 6 victories (1932, 1939, 1947, 1948, 1950, 1951)
Sweden: 5 wins (1973, 1989, 1991, 1993, 2000)
Austria: 1 win (1936)
England: 1 win (1953)
United States: 1 win (1937)
Corbillon Cup (women’s team)
China: 23 wins (1965, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2022, 2024)
Japan: 8 wins (1952, 1954, 1957, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1967, 1971)
Romania: 5 wins (1950, 1951, 1953, 1955, 1956)
Czechoslovakia: 3 victories (1935, 1936, 1938)
England: 2 victories (1947, 1948)
Germany: 2 victories (1933, 1939)
United States: 2 victories (1937, 1949)
South Korea: 1 win (1973)
Korea united: 1 win (1991)
Singapore: 1 win (2010)
Soviet Union: 1 win (1969)
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