ITTF and DOSB launch major table tennis coach development program across the Americas
The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) have launched a new development partnership focused on coach education in the Dominican Republic, Peru and Mexico, with the ambition of extending the program's impact beyond the borders of the three host countries. The initiative was officially presented on August 8, 2026, in the Dominican Republic, with the participation of ITTF President Petra Sörling and DOSB President Thomas Weikert. According to a joint announcement by the organizations, training sessions will be conducted over the coming months by experts from the German Table Tennis Association (DTTB), while some courses will also be available to coaches from other ITTF member associations across the Americas. The program is not conceived as a single model applied identically in all countries; instead, each component is tailored to the needs of the local associations. In practice, this means that the Dominican Republic will build a regional development base, Peru will seek to transfer expertise to more remote areas, and Mexico will prepare a new generation of coaches to work in schools.
The partnership comes in a year in which the ITTF is celebrating the centenary of its founding and of the first World Table Tennis Championships, held in London in 1926. The federation therefore presents the new project not only as part of the commemoration of a historic anniversary, but also as an investment in the period that follows it. The focus is not on infrastructure, major competitions or short-term results, but on the people who directly shape player development - coaches who are expected to transfer knowledge to clubs, schools and local communities. When presenting the project, Sörling emphasized that investing in coach education means preparing new generations of players and that support for national associations must have practical substance rather than remaining merely declarative. At the same time, DOSB views the project as a continuation of its long-standing international sports and development activities, through which German organizations share their professional expertise with partners outside the country.
Dominican Republic aims to become a regional hub
The broadest regional element of the program is planned for the Dominican Republic. According to the DOSB and ITTF announcement, a series of courses will be held there in connection with the opening of the ITTF-Americas Continental Development Centre, scheduled for later in 2026. The training sessions will not be limited to domestic coaches: the organizers state that experts from other national associations in the Americas will also be able to participate. Additional financial support is expected to come from the ITTF Development Programme for 2026, giving the project a continental dimension and increasing the possibility that knowledge acquired in Santo Domingo will be transferred further. Such a model is consistent with the goal of making the Dominican Republic one of the more important professional development points in the region, rather than merely a venue for individual seminars.
The plan builds on development activities that the ITTF had already been carrying out in the country before the new agreement with DOSB. In March, the federation announced that the Olympic Solidarity Development of National Sports System program had been completed in the Dominican Republic between October 2025 and February 2026, conducted in three phases. According to ITTF data, the program involved 191 people and included coach education, work with young players, club visits, a sports management seminar and changes to the national competition system. In the first phase, 22 coaches earned a Level 1 certificate, while ten of them returned in the second phase for the more advanced Level 2 course. The program also included a camp for 12 outstanding U15 and U19 players, as well as activities in Santo Domingo and Santiago de los Caballeros.
Continuity is also evident in the plans presented by the ITTF leadership during an earlier visit to the Americas. In September 2025, during an official stay in the Dominican Republic, Sörling held talks with representatives of Centro Caribe Sports and ITTF-Americas about a development centre at the Parque del Este facilities, a sports complex built for the 2003 Pan American Games. The ITTF stated at the time that the facilities were being renovated ahead of the Santo Domingo 2026 Central American and Caribbean Games. The new program with DOSB therefore comes at a time when several development projects in the country are already being linked into a more permanent structure. If the announced centre opens as planned, coach education involving participants from several countries could become one of its most important functions.
Peru focuses on coaches from more remote areas
Peru has been given a differently structured program because the main challenge is the geographical distribution of coaching expertise. According to the plan published by the ITTF and DOSB, 20 coaches will be selected from more remote parts of the country, and their education will be scheduled in connection with national competitions taking place during the year. The intention is not for the knowledge to remain concentrated among the course participants, but for them to transfer it to their regions and local table tennis communities after returning home. This approach to educating coaches outside the largest sports centres should help clubs and communities that have fewer opportunities for regular contact with international experts. The role of the selected participants is therefore twofold: they are both recipients of the education and future disseminators of knowledge.
Decentralization is important because the quality of coaching often determines how quickly a young player can progress from recreational participation in sport to structured training and competition. In sports that develop through a large number of local clubs, it is particularly important that basic standards of work do not depend solely on whether an athlete is located in the capital or a large regional centre. In its Development Programme for 2026, the ITTF lists education and youth development among its main priorities, alongside support for national associations in developing coaches, competition structures and youth programs. When presenting the program, the federation emphasized that development does not mean merely increasing the number of participants, but also building the capacities of people and organizations. The Peruvian part of the partnership with DOSB directly follows this logic: a small number of carefully selected coaches should generate a broader impact through their subsequent work in local communities.
For such a model to succeed, it will be important to see how well the national association can maintain a network of trained coaches after the courses are completed and provide them with opportunities for further professional development. A one-off training course can increase individual knowledge, but longer-term impact usually depends on whether regular contact, monitoring of work, access to methodological materials and a clear connection between local programs and the national system are maintained. The published plan does not yet provide a detailed schedule of all activities or the final locations of the courses, so it is not known what each implementation phase will look like. Nevertheless, the selection of participants from more remote areas clearly shows that the aim is to reduce the development gap between central and peripheral parts of the country. This is also one of the biggest differences between the Peruvian model and the programs planned for the Dominican Republic and Mexico.
Mexico prepares younger coaches to work in schools
In Mexico, the central theme will be the expansion of table tennis through the education system. The ITTF and DOSB state that a series of courses will support one of the key ambitions of the Mexican Table Tennis Federation - stronger integration of the sport into the school environment. The program will be aimed primarily at younger local coaches who, after the training, should be better prepared to work with children and young people. Unlike the Peruvian model, which emphasizes geographical decentralization, the Mexican part of the initiative starts from the places where new generations of potential players can be reached. Schools thus become the starting point for broadening the sport's participation base.
Such an approach also has organizational logic. Introducing table tennis into school programs can give a large number of children their first contact with the sport without requiring them to immediately join a specialized club. For the national federation, this creates an opportunity to identify interested and talented pupils earlier, but only if there are enough coaches who know how to work with beginners and adapt training to school-age children. This is precisely why the program does not focus solely on technical table tennis knowledge, but on developing a coaching workforce capable of presenting the sport to a new audience. According to the available information, details on the number of participants and the exact dates of the Mexican courses have not yet been made public.
An important element of the entire partnership is the fact that the training sessions will be led by DTTB experts, from an organization that celebrated its own centenary in 2025. The German federation is one of the DOSB's member organizations, and its involvement ensures that the project does not remain at the level of institutional cooperation, but incorporates concrete coaching and methodological expertise. DOSB is the umbrella organization for German sport and, according to figures cited in its announcement about the partnership, brings together 103 member organizations, approximately 29.3 million memberships and more than 86,000 clubs. The organization also has many years of experience in international sports development projects, including cooperation with the German Federal Foreign Office. In the project with the ITTF, this institutional breadth is combined with the DTTB's specific table tennis expertise.
Program presented at the conclusion of the Games in Santo Domingo
The timing and location of the partnership's launch carry additional symbolism. The initiative was presented on August 8 in the Dominican Republic, on the final day of the Santo Domingo 2026 Central American and Caribbean Games, which ran from July 24 to August 8. According to DOSB, Sörling and Weikert also attended a table tennis match at the Games during their stay. Centro Caribe Sports described the 2026 edition as the centennial Games, since the tradition of this regional multi-sport competition also dates back to 1926. Thus, two centennial sporting stories came together in the same place - the anniversary of international table tennis and the hundredth year of the regional Games.
For the ITTF, 2026 is particularly important because it marks one hundred years since both the federation's founding and the first World Championships. The ITTF's official historical overview states that representatives of Austria, England, Germany and Hungary met in Berlin on January 16, 1926, as part of the process that led to the creation of the international federation, while the first World Championships were held in London later that same year. London returned to the centre of the table tennis calendar in 2026 as the host of the centenary World Team Championships. In this context, the project in the Americas represents the other side of the anniversary: while major competitions recall the sport's history at the elite level, the development program seeks to leave behind an infrastructure of knowledge for the period after the celebrations.
Sörling summarized that direction with the message that partnerships like this are about the next hundred years of the sport. According to the DOSB announcement, Weikert emphasized that investing in coaches means investing in athletes, young people and the future of sport, and expressed the expectation that the projects would leave a lasting legacy from the centenary period. His message also included the broader dimension of international sports cooperation - connecting people across borders and fostering mutual understanding through sport. Such statements do not in themselves guarantee the program's results, but they show that both organizations are presenting it as a long-term development initiative rather than a one-off anniversary activity. The measurable impact will depend on how effectively the training strengthens local systems and how much of the newly acquired knowledge remains available to coaches after the individual courses have ended.
Coaches as the key link in developing new generations
The broader ITTF development framework for 2026 provides additional context for the new partnership. In this year's Participation Programme, the federation identified youth development, education, equipment, regional cooperation and support for national associations in planning as key areas of focus. According to ITTF data, 76 national associations from Africa, the Americas and Asia took part in the program during 2025, with 133 activities carried out and 9,802 participants involved; women accounted for 45 percent of the total. For 2026, coach education is explicitly included in the area of youth development, alongside national youth team programs and support for competition structures. The new agreement with DOSB is therefore not an isolated project, but fits into the ITTF's existing direction toward strengthening the professional and organizational capacities of its member associations.
The benefits for the three host countries are expected to differ. The Dominican Republic gains an opportunity to link domestic coach development with a continental centre and attract experts from other ITTF member associations. Through targeted education of 20 coaches, Peru seeks to spread knowledge to areas far from the main sporting centres. Mexico, meanwhile, is building a base of younger coaches to work in schools, where a large number of children who may not yet have contact with clubs can be reached. The common denominator of all three models is the assumption that sustainable growth in table tennis cannot be built solely on tournaments and elite results, but requires a sufficiently broad network of people who know how to teach, organize training and develop players from their first steps.
The next important phase will be the publication of more detailed dates, locations and participant lists for the individual training sessions. For now, the direction of the program, the host countries, the involvement of DTTB experts and the possibility of regional participation in some of the courses have been officially confirmed, while a complete operational schedule has not yet been presented publicly. Particular attention will be focused on the opening of the ITTF-Americas Continental Development Centre in the Dominican Republic, as it could provide a permanent institutional base for the cooperation launched during the centenary summer of 2026. If the model develops as announced, the real outcome of the partnership will not be measured by the number of seminars held, but by the number of coaches who turn the knowledge they acquire into higher-quality daily work with players and new generations across the Americas.
Sources:
- International Table Tennis Federation - official announcement on the ITTF and DOSB partnership, programs in the Dominican Republic, Peru and Mexico, and the role of the DTTB (link)
- German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) - official announcement on the launch of the partnership, regional objectives and statements by the organizations' leaders (link)
- International Table Tennis Federation - data on the Olympic Solidarity DNSS program in the Dominican Republic and the results of coach education in 2025/2026 (link)
- International Table Tennis Federation - official overview of the Participation Programme 2026 and the federation's development priorities (link)
- International Table Tennis Federation - report on development plans in the Americas and the centre project at the Parque del Este facilities in the Dominican Republic (link)
- International Table Tennis Federation - historical overview of the centenary and the meeting in Berlin on January 16, 1926, that preceded the founding of the federation (link)
- Centro Caribe Sports - official information on the dates and context of the XXV Central American and Caribbean Games Santo Domingo 2026 (link)