Table Tennis World Championships Medals by Country, 1926–2026

China Won None of the Golds Before 1959 and 69.9% of Them Since

China's first World Championships gold came in 1959. Across the 24 editions before it, 160 golds were awarded and none went to China. Across the 46 editions from 1959 to 2026, China took 165 of 236 golds, or 69.9%. Averaged edition by edition, China's share of an edition's golds is 74.9% since 1959, and in 20 of those editions every gold went to an all-China entry (cross-national pairs such as the 2015 China–South Korea mixed doubles are not counted as China here).

The winners' circle has also narrowed. Counting each country credited with at least one gold, 9 different countries won gold in the 1950s, 5 in the 1980s, and 3 in the 2020s (China, Japan, Sweden). Over the whole period China holds 165 golds; the next label, Japan, holds 50.

The chart reads the same story by decade: China took 94% of the 2000s golds, the highest cell on the grid, and China's row is the darkest from the 1980s on. Hungary appears twice because the source records Kingdom of Hungary (40 golds) and Hungary (32) as separate labels.

Share of Golds by Country and Decade

Each cell is a country's share of that decade's golds, for the ten labels with the most golds overall. Golds per decade: 1920s 17, 1930s 66, 1940s 21, 1950s 63, 1960s 35, 1970s 35, 1980s 35, 1990s 33, 2000s 35, 2010s 35, 2020s 21. Hover a cell for the value.

Every World Championships Medal, 1926–2026