World Para Championships 2026 preview

World Para Championships start in Pattaya with a 12-strong British team

13-19 November 2026: Will Bayley defends his class 7 title at the first Worlds with full gender parity

The ITTF World Para Table Tennis Championships start on Friday 13 November at the Pattaya Exhibition and Convention Hall in Thailand, with 12 British athletes taking part.

It is the first edition with complete gender parity, with 165 men and 165 women entered, a milestone the ITTF announced last year. All events are straight knockout, so there is no group stage to recover from a slow start.

Will Bayley, the men's class 7 world champion and world No.1, has a bye, according to the draw reported by Table Tennis England, to the quarter-finals, where he will meet either China's two-time Paralympic champion Yan Shuo or European champion Yannick Paredis of the Netherlands. "I feel that I've had a really good run the last three or four months," Bayley told British Para Table Tennis.

Teenager Bly Twomey, the women's class 7 European champion, plays her first World Championships and opens against Costa Rica's Kristel Morales Madriz. Men's class 1 European champion Rob Davies, the Rio 2016 Paralympic champion, also has a bye to the quarter-finals.

The doubles come first. Billy Shilton and Fliss Pickard defend world titles with new partners: Shilton with Martin Perry in men's class 14, and Pickard with Twomey in women's class 14. Bayley and Twomey, the European mixed doubles champions, play together in mixed class 14.

The Para Worlds have been held every four years since 1990, but the ITTF has since announced a move to a two-year cycle.