Qualification for the 2021 World Table Tennis Championships in Houston has been revised due to the challenges posed by the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic.

The ITTF Table Tennis World Ranking will now be adopted to determine the qualification of players for the prestigious tournament that will be held in the United States from 23-29 November 2021 for the first time.

The pandemic has forced the cancellation of several qualification tournaments for the year-end showpiece, including the regional and continental qualification events for the singles events and intercontinental qualification events for the team events.

The elite field will now consist of 128 singles (Men and Women) and 64 pairs in each of the doubles competitions (Men Doubles, Women Doubles, Mixed Doubles) with the application of the 3+1+1 rule which states each Member Association (MA) will be limited to a maximum of three players. The exception will be of those MAs with a player in the top 100 World Ranking (who will be allocated one extra place) and a player in the top 20 World Ranking (who will be allocated one further extra place).

In the event of a replacement, MAs will have the authority to replace any of the qualified players with another from the same MA. The only requirement is that the replacement must be among the top 256 players in the ITTF Table Tennis World Ranking.

The World Table Tennis Championship has a fabled history with the first event held in London in 1926. The highly anticipated return of the World Table Tennis Championships, last held in Budapest in 2019, has a global reach of over 500 million fans across TV and digital platforms. The previous edition planned for Busan last year was postponed and eventually cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.