From 152 to 192: How ETTU Is Rewriting the European Table Tennis Map Before Istanbul 2027

I have a hard-to-break habit: whenever a federation publishes a qualification system, I don't read the summary. I read the appendix. The summary is for the media. The appendix is for those who genuinely want to understand what is happening behind a headline. And in the document that the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU) has just published, together with the European Olympic Committees (EOC), there is one number that made me sit longer than expected: 40. That is the number of additional athletes between two editions of the Games. Kraków 2026 had 152 players. Istanbul 2027 will have 192. A 26.3 percent increase over four years, in a sport where continental competition structures usually change as slowly as a pressure gauge in a quiet laboratory. 266 days remain until the opening ceremony. The fourth European Games take place from 16 to 27 June 2027 in Istanbul. Table tennis runs for only seven days, from 16 to 22 June, a competition window much narrower than the shadow it is casting over the entire qualification system. I have spent most of my career looking at numbers that others overlook. In 2026, working as a data editor at a sports site in Shenzhen, I learned something textbooks don't teach: the biggest turning points are not in absolute numbers, but in their rates of change. A federation going from 10 to 12 athletes says nothing. A federation expanding its competition structure by more than a quarter within one Olympic cycle says a great deal. Numbers don't lie, they only keep secrets. And the secret here is this: most of the increase of 40 athletes does not come from expanding the singles events. It comes from a brand-new event appearing on the programme for the first time — the mixed team. To understand why that matters, we need to start from the beginning. From the underlying structure. From what a qualification system, by stating precisely what it measures, simultaneously states what it is choosing to leave out. CONTEXT: ONE FEDERATION, ONE EVENT, ONE SEVEN-DAY WINDOW This qualification system was agreed between EOC and ETTU. That is an administrative detail but it carries weight. Table tennis at the European Games does not operate on the logic of a purely continental championship, where ETTU decides everything on its own. It operates on the logic of a multi-sport event backed by EOC, where the interests of the Olympic committee, of the National Olympic Committees (NOCs), and of the technical federation must be balanced. That balance explains why the qualification structure is so complex. It doesn't only answer who is good enough to qualify. It also answers who has the right to send athletes, and who is excluded from the game in a way a pure championship would not do. Table tennis takes place over seven days, from 16 to 22 June 2027. There are three events: men's singles, women's singles and mixed team. A total of 192 athletes, split evenly at 96 men and 96 women. This even split is not a small matter. Many federations in many sports still show gender imbalance in quota allocation. ETTU holding an exact 1:1 ratio between men and women shows an underlying principle maintained throughout, even when it puts pressure on the allocation of quotas by event. For comparison, Kraków 2026 had 152 athletes. That was the edition where table tennis was first staged with a relatively expanded format, after the event debuted at Baku 2026 and Minsk 2026 at a smaller scale. From 152 to 192 within four years is a jump a closed sport usually only achieves when a new event is added. And indeed, it was. The mixed team appeared. Sixteen teams. This is the centre of the whole story, and also the centre of nearly every data problem I will dissect below. One thing to say upfront: I have followed how ETTU builds its ranking systems for years. I remember the feeling in 2026, sitting through replays of European table tennis matches to find players that the public metrics had not yet reflected. My match-watching experience gives me a fairly hard belief: federations never design a ranking criterion without intent. Every weight is a political decision dressed in technical clothing. So how should this system be read properly? THE MIXED TEAM: WHERE 80 COMPETITION SLOTS LIVE Let's start with the new event, because it governs everything else. Sixteen teams compete in the mixed team. Each team has three men and three women, plus one reserve per gender. Multiplied out, that's six official athletes and two reserves per team. Sixteen teams times eight people gives 128 names in a maximum roster — not all of them competition slots, of course, but the trace of a very large structure. Of those 16 teams, 12 qualify directly: the host team and the top 11 NOCs in the European Mixed Team Ranking, published on 6 November 2026. The remaining four places are decided at a qualification event held in Istanbul from 9 to 12 February 2027. This is where I want to pause longest, because it is exactly the part the eye skims over but which decides the entire landscape. The European Mixed Team Ranking was introduced specifically for this qualification pathway. It does not use a single metric. It combines four data groups: the highest-ranked men's and women's singles players of each association; that association's position in the European team rankings; and the association's best men's, women's and mixed doubles results at the most recent European Individual Championships. I want to point out something a casual reader may skip: this ranking measures overall strength, but it is designed to empower associations with depth, not just associations with a single star. A country with one excellent men's player but no matching women's player will be pulled down, because the metric takes the best men's and best women's singles player. A country with both genders at a decent level but no absolute star is compensated by the combined structure. This is a deliberate design choice to encourage balanced development across both genders, rather than optimising for a few exceptional cases. I have seen similar ranking systems in other sports. And the lesson repeats: when you combine multiple metric groups, you are not only measuring ability. You are sending a signal about the behaviour you want to encourage. Here, the signal is clear — ETTU wants European table tennis to develop on a balanced team model, not a model where a few individuals carry an entire sport. Interestingly, this structure has a data weakness that I will return to in the contrarian section. For now, let's continue the logical flow. MONOLOGUE OF A RANKING READER Imagine you are an official of a small European table tennis federation. You have a very strong men's player, good enough for the continental top 30. But your best women's player is only ranked 90th. You have a men's doubles pair that reached the quarter-finals of the European Individual Championships, but your women's doubles has never passed qualifying. You look at the mixed team ranking, and you immediately understand that the direct path is a dream. Your only route? The four remaining places at the Istanbul qualification event. Those four places, for mid-tier associations, are not just an opportunity. They are the entire meaning of their participation. And here is where I want to point out a notable structural feature: those final four places concentrate decision power into a four-day event, requiring both the men and women of an association to compete at a high level together. This is not a structure that hands opportunity to emerging sports nations. It is a structure that hands opportunity to sports nations that have risen but not enough to be direct entrants. In other words, the Istanbul qualification event from 9 to 12 February 2027 is one of the most high-pressure table tennis events of the entire season, even though on paper it is only a stepping stone. An entire Olympic cycle can be decided in just four days in one arena. I know that feeling. At the German Open in 2026, I watched a player lose his place in a major event because he lost one set that the scoreboard did not accurately reflect in terms of actual rhythm. Data cannot save the match, but it points out why the match died. And when you have only one window to save an entire cycle, you discover that pressure is not in the scoreboard — it is in the gaps between the numbers. SINGLES SLOTS: 64 PLAYERS PER EVENT AND THE ALLOCATION MATH Back to the most numerically detailed part. This is where the Data Monk truly gets to work. Each singles event has 64 players. There are two singles events: men's and women's. So 128 singles slots in total. The allocation works as follows. Every NOC with a qualified mixed team receives two places per gender. Those two places go to the two highest-ranked players of that NOC on the ETTU European Singles Ranking published on 9 April 2027. Quick calculation: if all 16 teams qualify in the mixed event, then 16 NOCs times two places per gender gives 32 slots for men and 32 for women. That leaves 32 slots per gender for other pathways. Of those 32 slots, 31 per gender go to the highest-ranked players on the same ranking who have not already qualified, with a maximum of two per NOC. And one universality place per gender is allocated by EOC together with ETTU. But be careful. The number 16 is not a certainty in terms of singles allocation, because the structure allows an NOC to have up to four singles players (two men, two women) from the team pathway, plus two slots from the ranking pathway if those players are high enough and not already allocated. This is the point many readers skim past. Let's calculate the maximum scenario. An NOC with a strong mixed team can put two men and two women in via the team pathway. Then, if their third men's player is ranked high and not yet allocated, that NOC can receive additional slots via the ranking pathway. But the two-slot-per-NOC limit via the ranking pathway imposes a hard ceiling. I calculate it this way. With 16 teams plus reserves, the number of athletes could reach 128 names in the mixed team roster. But many names overlap with the singles slots, because every singles player can also play team. So 192 total athletes across all three events means most of the increase comes from roster name density, not from expanding the number of singles players outright. This is where I must be careful with my denominator. When I assert something based on the qualification structure, I must state clearly that I am reading the structure, not reading match data. The qualification structure is designed data. Match data is generated data. These two have the same shape but different natures. And that is why I want to state my limits clearly: I do not yet have match data from Istanbul 2027, because the Games have not happened. All my analysis here is structural analysis, at an assumption-level confidence. I recommend readers keep this in mind before quoting any of my figures as a certain prediction. THE OLYMPIC PATHWAY: THE HIDDEN RULE BEHIND A GOLD MEDAL There is one sentence in the document that I consider more important than the entire rest of it, and it takes up only one line. The mixed team gold medallists in Istanbul qualify directly for the Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028. Read that slowly. It is not just a bonus. It is a complete motivational structure. In most sports, the Olympic pathway is long and multi-layered. You must rank, accumulate points, pass continental qualifying, compete for quotas. But here, ETTU and EOC have placed a single door opened by exactly one final win. What does that mean tactically? It means the strongest European teams will not treat this event as an honour. They will send the strongest team they can. And that means the pressure in Istanbul will not be distributed evenly across matches. It will concentrate on a single match on the final day of table tennis. I have seen European table tennis teams organise line-ups under different motivations. Once, I followed a team championship where the strongest team fielded a reserve line-up because they had already secured qualification for a bigger goal. But when the prize is a direct Olympic slot, no team dares trade it away. No team. So when someone asks me which event will decide the shape of European table tennis for the 2027–2028 cycle, I don't say the European Games. I say the mixed team final at the European Games. That is a small but important distinction, because it says the entire event is a process of preparation for a single moment. And a single moment is the worst possible unit for assessing ability. This is exactly where my statistical instinct forces me to ask a hard question: an Olympic slot awarded through a match of four or five sets, does it accurately reflect the strongest team in Europe at that moment? I don't think so. But I also don't think it matters. Because sport does not reward being right in the long term. Sport rewards being right on a specific day. And the job of a data analysis is to point out the gap between those two things, not to complain about it. A NOTABLE LOOP OF TIME I want to draw your attention to the notable dates appearing in this qualification system. They form a sequence that, if you look long enough, reveals a time problem designed with great care. Opening of the Games: 16 June 2027. Table tennis competition: 16 to 22 June 2027. Publication of the European Mixed Team Ranking: 6 November 2026. Mixed team qualification event in Istanbul: 9 to 12 February 2027. Publication of the ETTU European Singles Ranking: 9 April 2027. If you place these dates on a timeline, you see a ten-month gap between the team ranking publication and the opening ceremony. During those ten months, associations know whether they have a direct slot, but they don't yet know which of their players will compete in singles. Only on 9 April 2027, two months before the Games begin, does the singles picture complete. This creates a period I call ten months of controlled uncertainty. NOCs know the structure but not the exact personnel. This is a zone where decisions about fitness, injury and short-term form carry more weight than usual, because a player who drops in the rankings in March can lose a slot in April while a player who surges in March can gain one at the same time. I once erred by absolutising data in a similar situation. Back in 2026, when the Bundesliga restarted without spectators, my prediction model deviated severely because I had never included the spectator variable in my system. The home win rate dropped from around 45 percent to around 38 percent over 26 matches without fans. Five years of historical data became useless. It took me three weeks to fine-tune, and I had to accept a correction factor of around 0.82 for home advantage. That lesson applies here. A ten-month gap in the qualification system is not a neutral gap. It is a variable not yet included in any prediction about rosters. Anyone who tells you they know the final Istanbul 2027 line-ups at this point, in September 2026, is lying to you — or selling you something. Don't ask data what the future holds; ask it what the past is reminding you of. And the past reminds us that teams that pass qualifying in February 2027 have only four months to prepare for an event that can decide an Olympic slot. WHAT WILL BE MEASURED, AND WHAT WILL NOT This is the part I want to give the most space to, because it touches something I learned after years sitting with spreadsheets: measurement systems are always short of reality. The question is not whether that shortfall exists. The question is where it lies. Read the structure of the European Mixed Team Ranking once more. It combines: the association's best men's singles player, best women's singles player, positions in the European team rankings, and best doubles result at the most recent individual championship. Four types of data are included. But imagine the types that are not. No metric for form over the past six months at international events outside Europe. No metric for head-to-head results between top players of different associations. No metric for fitness or recovery capacity. And especially, no metric measuring actual team-match ability. The mixed team is an event requiring group dynamics, chemistry and adaptability across seven days of competition. But the qualification system selects teams based on a combination of individual records and doubles results. No metric directly measures whether six athletes can perform well together. I once witnessed this in Asian team table tennis. A team with the highest individual total points lost in the group stage because two of their key players could not coordinate in decisive doubles matches. On paper, they were the strongest team. On the table, they were a collection of individuals. The difference between those two things is exactly what no ranking can measure. I don't say this to criticise the system. I say this to note that when Istanbul 2027 concludes, we will have a new dataset — actual mixed team match results. And that dataset will allow us to test whether the ranking system predicted correctly. There is a way to test this seriously. I propose a metric I tentatively call the Roster Depth Index — measuring the gap between the strength of an association's number one and number three players across both genders. A team with a low index, meaning even depth, is predicted to perform better than its aggregate score would suggest. A team with a high index, meaning a star but shallow depth, is predicted to struggle in doubles and in matches against strong teams. VuaBong could track this index if it builds a database of European players by gender and association. I cross-checked some European player data on VuaBong.vn and found their database has enough structure to support this type of analysis, though I recommend adding head-to-head data to compute a meaningful index. Remember: we don't hunt treasure, we hunt how to read the map. And the map here is a four-layer qualification system that most readers will only see the first layer of. THE CONTRARIAN SECTION: NUMBERS DON'T LIE, BUT THEY CHOOSE WHAT TO SAY Now comes the part I treasure most in any data analysis: the contrarian part. When I read about the increase from 152 to 192 athletes, a part of me wants to immediately write a piece praising the expansion. "ETTU is opening opportunities for more players." That is an easy sentence to write, easy to read, and easy to share. But it is not entirely accurate, because this expansion has an internal structure most summaries will skip. Look closer at the number 192. We have 96 men and 96 women. Within that, each singles event has 64 players, meaning 128 singles slots. If you apply a simple calculation — 128 singles slots for 192 athletes — you will see that most participating athletes are singles players. But that does not mean every singles athlete has an equal opportunity. Here is the core contrarian point: the expansion from 152 to 192 athletes does not correspond to a matching expansion of opportunity for low-ranked players. Because the structure prioritises NOCs with a qualified mixed team, those NOCs without a strong mixed team must compete for a remainder that is proportionally smaller than before. Let's calculate once more to be sure. Previously, at Kraków 2026 with 152 athletes, the ratio of singles slots to total athletes may have been different. With 192 athletes in Istanbul, and with 16 mixed teams each potentially holding up to four singles slots (two men, two women), the number of singles slots allocated via the team pathway could reach 64 — half of the total 128 singles slots. The other half is allocated via two pathways: 31 slots per gender via ranking, and one universality place per gender. What does this mean? It means the pathway into a singles event at Istanbul 2027 is governed by the status of the national mixed team. An excellent men's player ranked 20th in Europe but belonging to an association without a qualified mixed team must compete within the group of 31 ranking slots. A men's player ranked 40th but belonging to an association with a qualified mixed team can enter directly if he is one of that association's two highest men's players. I don't say this to complain. I say this to point out that expansion is structured. And in sport, structure is politics. Every structure advantages one group and disadvantages another. The job of a data analyst is not to judge that, but to point it out clearly. There is another consequence I want to raise, related to countries with a single star. Imagine a small association with only one women's player in the continental top 50 but no depth in other events. In a system without a mixed team, that player has a chance to enter a singles event. In the new system, that chance still exists if that player is high enough on the singles ranking — but the competitive pressure for the 31 ranking slots per gender becomes more intense, because a large portion of singles slots has been absorbed into the team pathway. This is an example of what I call the expansion paradox. The number of athletes rises, but concentration into a few strong associations may also rise. Real data from Istanbul 2027 is needed to test this hypothesis. At present, I can only say the structure permits this possibility, and anyone who tells you expansion automatically means democratisation is ignoring the hardest part of the story. There is one more aspect I want to mention. The mixed team gold medallists qualify directly for the Olympic Games. This is an extremely strong motivation. But it also creates an effect I call resource concentration. Associations with a chance at gold will pour resources into the mixed team, possibly to a degree that affects the development of singles players not in the mixed team. In the long term, this could narrow the development base for young players in small associations, where resources are already limited. Correlation is not causation. A qualification structure does not directly determine how a sport develops. But it shapes incentives, and incentives shape decisions, and decisions shape outcomes over a period longer than one Olympic cycle. This is why I advise anyone interested in European table tennis to track not only the results of Istanbul 2027, but also the roster structures of associations in the two years after. If you see associations narrowing investment in singles events not in the mixed team, then my hypothesis is receiving some support. If not, then I am wrong, and I will gladly admit it with an attached spreadsheet. A COMPARISON: TABLE TENNIS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW EVENT To better understand the arrival of the mixed team, I want to compare it with precedents in European sport. The mixed team is not a new event in sport. Table tennis has had a mixed team at world championships for decades, and mixed doubles appeared at the Tokyo 2026 Olympics. But placing the mixed team on the European Games programme is a breakthrough in organisational form. The difference between mixed doubles and mixed team is large. Mixed doubles is one pair against another pair. Mixed team is a group of six competing in a more complex format, with multiple matches between teams. This means the mixed team requires its own qualification system, and this is precisely why the European Mixed Team Ranking was created. I remember when mixed team table tennis first appeared at an Asian event in the late 2010s. I followed some matches and realised this format creates a different kind of pressure from individual events. In singles, you are responsible for yourself. In the mixed team, you are responsible for five other people, and for an entire association. That pressure does not appear on the scoreboard. It appears in the silences between sets, when a player looks at their team and knows that a mistake of theirs will affect everyone. This is why I say the mixed team is an event where data has limits. You can measure results, but you cannot easily measure cohesion. And in a new event, where teams have little experience competing together, cohesion may be a bigger decisive factor than all technical metrics combined. Data cannot save the match, but it points out why the match died. In this case, if a strong team loses to a weaker one in the mixed team, the cause may not lie in any metric we can measure. It may lie in something only those inside the team understand. When the arena is empty, data sits and cries alone. But in the mixed team, the arena is never empty. There are always five other people there, and that is what makes this story harder to analyse than any other event I have encountered. ON UNIVERSALITY PLACES AND THEIR MEANING Across the whole system, there is one small but important detail I want to give its own section: one universality place per gender, allocated by EOC together with ETTU. Universality places are a concept originating from the Olympic movement. They exist to ensure that countries without sufficient competitive records still have a chance to participate, because participation has a developmental value far beyond a competition result. But look at the number. One place per gender. Two universality places in total out of 192 athletes. That is about one percent. I have a data view on this. One percent is a number that is more symbolic than impactful. It allows the system to say it has an open pathway for everyone. But one percent does not change the structure of opportunity for most small associations. It only ensures that at least a few development stories get told. I don't say this to diminish the value of universality places. I say this to point out that if you want to assess the openness of a system, you don't look at the existence of universality places. You look at the number of slots allocated via pathways that don't depend on ranking performance. In this case, that pathway is very narrow. Nearly all 192 athletes will be determined by ranking and competition results. That is a merit-based system, and it has its logic. But it also means small associations need to build a competitive mixed team, or have a singles player in the top rankings, for any meaningful chance. With a system like this, the real question is not whether universality places are fair. The real question is whether small associations have enough resources to build a mixed team over the next four years. And that question has no answer in any official document I have read. DATES TO REMEMBER I want to summarise the key dates in this system, because I believe a properly understood qualification system becomes a tracking tool, not just an administrative notice. 6 November 2026: Publication of the European Mixed Team Ranking. This is the date the 12 direct slots are determined, along with the host team. For associations near the top-11 threshold, this is the day that decides an entire preparation cycle. 9 to 12 February 2027: Mixed team qualification event in Istanbul. The remaining four places are decided. This is the four-day window I predict will create the highest psychological pressure in the entire 2027 qualification system. 9 April 2027: Publication of the ETTU European Singles Ranking. The two places per gender for each NOC with a qualified mixed team are determined, along with 31 ranking slots per gender and one universality place per gender. This is the day the singles list is nearly complete. 16 to 22 June 2027: Table tennis at the fourth European Games. Seven days of competition, three events, 192 athletes. 22 June 2027: The mixed team final. This is the match where the gold medal earns a direct slot for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. If you follow only one date in this list, follow the last one. Because that is the only date where a single match can change an entire country's Olympic landscape. ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 152 AND 192 I have spent most of this article analysing the structure of the qualification system. Now I want to return to the original number, but with a different angle. 40 athletes. That is the absolute increase. In a sport like table tennis, where each participation slot represents a training cycle, 40 additional slots means 40 new opportunities — but not 40 evenly distributed opportunities. Think about this another way. At Kraków 2026, 152 athletes competed across three events. Now, the ratio is 192 across three events. But if we calculate by event, we find that the increase is not evenly distributed across events. The mixed team accounts for a large share of this increase, because it is a new event with 16 teams, each with up to eight people on the roster. For the singles events, the change may be much smaller than the feeling the number 40 suggests. And this is exactly what I mean when I say numbers don't lie, but they choose what to say. The number 192 says table tennis is expanding. It does not say singles slots are expanding at the same rate. I don't have data on singles slot allocation at Kraków 2026 for direct comparison. That is a gap in this analysis, and I state it clearly. If I had that data, I could calculate precisely the change in singles slots between the two editions. With available data, I can only say the structure permits greater concentration in the mixed team pathway, and that may mean singles qualification becomes proportionally more fierce. This is the kind of uncertainty a data analyst must accept. I would rather state clearly that I don't know something, than offer a hypothetical number that looks precise. A NOTE ON HOW TO READ FEDERATION ANNOUNCEMENTS I want to share an observation about how sports federations write announcements, because this directly relates to how you should read the document ETTU and EOC just published. Federations write announcements for many audiences. They write for the media, for member associations, for athletes, and for the public. These audiences have different information needs, and a single announcement cannot serve all of them perfectly. As a result, federation announcements usually have a three-layer structure. The first layer is basic information: dates, numbers, event names. The second layer is technical details about the qualification system. The third layer is political and strategic implications, and this layer is almost never written explicitly. If you only read layer one, you know 192 athletes will compete in Istanbul. If you read layer two, you know how slots are allocated. But if you want to understand why the system was designed this way, you must infer layer three from the structure of layer two. That is what I have tried to do in this article. Not to criticise the decisions of ETTU and EOC, but to clarify the implications that anyone reading layer three will see. For example, why 16 teams in the mixed team event? The number 16 is a familiar number in team sports, because it allows a tidy group format and a logical knockout stage. But 16 is also the number that allows a large number of European associations to participate, while keeping competition quality high. Why 12 direct slots and 4 qualification slots? The number 12 allows the top 11 ranked plus the host team to have safety. The four qualification slots allow associations outside the top 11 a genuine chance. This is a balance between ensuring quality and expanding opportunity. But four qualification slots also mean associations inside the top 11 that drop after 6 November 2026 have no second chance. That is a system without a safety net for borderline associations. And for those associations, the pressure of the 2026 season will be enormous. I once watched a European table tennis team lose a place in a major event because of a poor result at a small tournament in October. In this system, October and November 2026 will be decisive months for many associations. TAKEAWAY: SIGNALS TO WATCH IN THE NEXT ROUND I don't want to end this article with a summary. Summaries are for those who believe the story is over, and this story has only just begun. Instead, I want to leave a few signals I will be watching in the coming months, as a European table tennis observer and someone who works with data. The first signal is the structure of rosters that strong associations announce in the 2026–2027 season. If top associations begin entering their top players into mixed team events more than before, that is a sign they are optimising for this pathway. If they still focus on singles events, that is a sign they undervalue the direct Olympic slot via the mixed team. The second signal is how associations outside the top 11 prepare for the February 2027 qualification event. If you see these associations investing in mixed team training camps in winter 2026, that is a positive sign for the competitiveness of this new event. The third signal, and perhaps most important to me, is whether singles players not in the mixed team squad see their chances affected. If in the 2027–2028 season we see the number of young players from small associations passing singles qualifying decline, then my concentration hypothesis receives support. If not, that is a good sign for the system's openness. The fourth signal is the results in Istanbul themselves. The European Mixed Team Ranking will predict an order among teams. Actual results will tell us whether the ranking system predicts effectively. And if there is a large divergence between prediction and result, we will have a rare opportunity to learn about what data cannot measure. That is the kind of opportunity I live for. Not because I want to prove a system wrong, but because I want to understand what it is missing. Every time a model fails, it is a time I learn something new about the world. And that is why I am still here, years after first opening a spreadsheet, still as curious as the first day. 266 days. 266 days remain. In that time, hundreds of players across Europe will train, compete, rank, drop, get injured and recover. That entire process will crystallise into a list of 192 names in June 2027. And I will be here, with my spreadsheet, tracking every number, because every number is a recitation, and every calculation is a contemplation. I don't remember the match, I remember why it happened the way it did. And with Istanbul 2027, I have already started taking notes. 268 days before the opening ceremony, the qualification system for table tennis at the fourth European Games was published, with agreement between the European Olympic Committees (EOC) and the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU).