World Table Tennis Championships: All-time medal table

Chengdu, China, hosted the 2022 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals beginning Friday (30 September), lasting through 9 October.

The 56th edition of the Championships – and 11th as a standalone Team Championships – were fiercely contested, with the hosts China continuing their domination of the sport.

But when did China win its first medals? Which other teams dominate the Championships? When was the last time China did not win World Championships gold?

Olympics.com takes a look at a brief history of the World Table Tennis Championships, and its all-time medal table.

READ MORE: 2022 World Team Championships preview

Brief history of the World Table Tennis Championships

The World Championships in table tennis were first held in London, England, in 1926, with men's and women's singles, men's and mixed doubles, and men's team events.

Women's doubles were introduced at the second edition of the World Championships, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1928, while the women's team event made its debut in 1934 in Paris, France.

The team events formed part of every World Championships until 1997, after which they were split into individual and team events. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, hosted the first World Team Championships in 2000, while Osaka, Japan, hosted the final combined World Championships a year later.

Early editions were dominated by European countries, notably Hungary, before the People's Republic of China finally joined the Championships in the 1950s and began winning titles.

The oldest trophy in table tennis is the Swaythling Cup, first awarded to the victorious men's team in London in 1926. The trophies for the other six events did not follow until 1929 and 1931 for singles, 1933 for the women's team, and the late 1940s for the three doubles events.

World Table Tennis Championships medals: Individual events

Athletes representing Hungary won eight of the first nine men's singles world titles, and the first seven women's singles crowns, as the central European country exerted the early dominance.

Ironically, the one gold they did not win was on home soil in Budapest in 1929, as Fred Perry – the English tennis player who also excelled at table tennis – claimed gold.

China won the first of its gold medals in 1959 when Rong Guotuan claimed the men's singles title, but after a brief early spell of domination were set back by the Cultural Revolution in the country, which saw the team miss the 1967 and 1969 Championships.

However, since their return, they have proven difficult to displace, especially in women's competition. Since the 1979 World Championships in Pyongyang, DPR Korea, only once has a non-Chinese athlete taken the women's singles world title – Korea Republic's Hyun Junghwa in 1993. There has also been Chinese representation on the top step of the women's doubles podium at every edition since 1977 except in 1987, when Hyun and Yang Youngja won gold.

China leads the medal table in each individual event, with 21 men's singles, 24 women's singles, 18 men's doubles, 23.5 women's doubles, and 20.5 mixed doubles gold medals for a total of 107 golds. Hungary sits second all-time with 56 gold medals.

The last time China failed to win an individual gold medal was at the most recent World Championships, when Sweden's Mattias Falck and Kristian Karlsson won the men's doubles title.

Combined medal table: Singles and doubles

In doubles events, teams may be made up of pairs representing two different nations. In this situation, a medal won by such a pair counts as half a medal for each participating nation. Additionally, athletes from both the Republic of Korea and DPR Korea represented a unified team at the 1991 World Championships.

World Table Tennis Championships medals: Team events

China has won each team event 22 times, taking its first title in 1961 on the men's side. Unlike in the individual events, China's recent stranglehold over the men's team event does not stretch back as far.

Chinese teams have won 11 of the last 12 men's World Team Championship crowns dating back to the 1995 World Championships in Tianjin, with the streak being interrupted once by Sweden in 2000. They have also won 20 of the last 22 women's titles since winning gold in Kolkata in 1975, only losing in finals twice in that time – to a unified Korea team in 1991 and Singapore in 2010.

As in the individual events, Hungary also features high on the list of title-winners in team events, but it's Japan who sit second behind China's 42, with a combined 15 gold medals.

Combined medal table: Teams

Athletes from both the Republic of Korea and DPR Korea represented a unified team at the 1991 World Championships. They competed separately at the 2018 World Team Championships but merged to form a single unified women's team in the quarter-final stage.