Over the past few months we have undergone extensive consultation on Table Tennis England’s current draft Transgender Inclusion Policy on gender appropriateness within our sport, including consulting with multiple stakeholder groups and inviting feedback and experiences on this topic.
The policy is expected to be finalized and released in early 2026 and implemented for the 2026/27 season.
The Gender Eligibility Policy will include the eligibility criteria for the ‘Open’ and ‘Female’ gender categories for TTE regulated competition at nationally ranked level. This is in line with the general approach taken in the broader sports landscape.
Full details and accompanying documents will be published with the policy in due course.
Due to the introduction of gender eligibility terminology, there is potential for confusion with existing terminology used in competitive event formats.
Therefore, we are launching another round of consultation regarding the terminology used in competition event formatsindicating whether access to a regulated event is limited to specific groups or available to all eligible players. These are currently Open, Invitation and Closed.
It is proposed to change the existing names for competition event formats from ‘Open’, ‘Invitation’ and ‘Closed’ to ‘All-Comers’, ‘Invitation’ and ‘Closed’. This allows ‘Open’ to be used within gender eligibility categories instead. All-Comers were chosen because it is a term that is widely used in the sporting landscape and is well understood in this context.
The definitions of these competition event formats remain unchanged:
- ‘All-Comers’ refers to a competition that can be entered by anyone affiliated with TTE, including mutuals (members of other home countries) and visiting players (members of other ITTF associations). This includes 1*/2*/4* tournaments.
- “Invitation” continues to refer to a nationally authorized tournament that meets all the rules for an “All Comers” tournament, except that it is not open to any affiliated member. This includes National Championships, National Series and National Cups.
- ‘Closed’ will continue to refer to competitions authorized and regulated by a TTE affiliated organization (province, club or league) and limited to its bona fide membership.
If you would like to take part in the consultation around the new event format naming convention, please click here. The closing date is Wednesday, December 10 at 8:00 PM.
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