Africa’s leading table tennis stars, Quadri Aruna of Nigeria and Hana Goda of Egypt, will begin their 2026 seasons at the WTT Champions Doha in Qatar on Thursday as they seek a strong response to the disappointment of missing last year’s season-ending WTT Cup Finals, Afrosport reports.
The 2025 WTT Cup Finals marked a historic low point for African representation, as no player from the continent qualified for the elite event for the first time since its launch in 2021.
Aruna, who had featured in every edition of the tournament and finished 2025 as Africa’s highest-ranked male player, narrowly missed out on a top-16 place.
Egypt’s Omar Assar also failed to qualify, while Hana Goda, Africa’s leading female player, fell short of the ranking requirement for the women’s draw.
Attention now turns to Doha, where Aruna and Goda face formidable opponents in the opening round of the singles competition at the Lusail Sports Arena.
Aruna is set for a high-profile clash against China’s Liang Jingkun, renewing a rivalry that has produced memorable encounters in the past. The Nigerian famously upset Jingkun at the 2021 WTT Cup Finals, though the Chinese player had earlier asserted his dominance with a 4-1 victory at the 2018 Korean Open. Their meeting in Qatar will be the third between the two.
Goda, meanwhile, faces one of the toughest tests of her young career against former world number one Zhu Yuling of Macao. The match will be their first-ever international meeting, with the Egyptian teenager hoping to make a statement on one of the sport’s biggest stages.
Beyond pride, players at the tournament are competing for valuable world ranking points and a share of the $500,000 prize fund.
Elsewhere, Omar Assar endured an early setback to his 2026 campaign. The Egyptian, who recently began working with Austrian coach and former world champion Werner Schlager, was eliminated in the first round after surrendering a one-game lead in a 3-1 loss to Japan’s Shunsuke Togami.
Despite the early exit, Assar remains determined to re-establish himself among the sport’s elite this season.
The WTT Champions Doha marks the first time the prestigious “purple” WTT Champions event is being hosted in the Qatari capital, adding extra prestige to the season-opening tournament.
