England No 1s Tom Jarvis and Tin-Tin Ho top the list of players who will be automatically invited to the Mark Bates Ltd Senior National Championships 2026.

Paralympic medallists Billy Shilton, Megan Shackleton and Jack Hunter-Spivey are among those invited to the para competitions.

The January ranking lists, which have been published here, were used to determine the top eight senior men and senior women who will be invited to the flagship tournament at the David Ross Sports Village in Nottingham, from 20-22 March. Tickets for the event will go on sale next month.

Defending champions Ho and Liam Pitchford are among them and Ho will be looking to create history by winning an unprecedented eighth Women’s Singles title, having last year equalled the record of seven held by Table Tennis England President Jill Parker MBE.

Ho is the only woman in the field to have won the Women’s Singles title, whereas four invited athletes have 19 Men’s Singles titles between them.

Pitchford last year won for the seventh time to go level with Paul Drinkhall in second place on the all-time list. Andrew Baggaley has three titles and Jarvis two.

Those invited are:

	Men’s Singles		Women’s Singles
1	Tom Jarvis	1	Tin-Tin Ho
2	Liam Pitchford	2	Tianer Yu
3	Paul Drinkhall	3	Sophie Earley
4	Sam Walker	4	Ella Pashley
5	David McBeath	5	Jasmin Wong
6	Connor Green	6	Mari Baldwin
7	Andrew Baggaley	7	Sienna Jetha
8	Joseph Hunter	8	Anna Green

Meanwhile, Paris 2024 and Tokyo 2020 medallist Billy Shilton is top of the six athletes invited to compete in the Class 6-10 competition, which he won last year.

Defending champion Jack Hunter-Spivey is invited back to the Class 2-5 competition, where he is joined by fellow Tokyo Paralympic medallist Megan Shackleton.

Those invited are:

Class 2-5			Class 6-10
1	Megan Shackleton		1	Billy Shilton
2	Jack Hunter-Spivey		2	Shae Thakker
3	Romain Simon		3	Max Flint
4	Lauren Jones		4	Jaiden Caldeira
5	Andrew Green		5	Daniel Thomson
6	Thomas Hepburn		6	Bailey Page

Enter the qualifying tournament and compete to join the big guns!

Entries are currently open for the qualifying rounds of the Mark Bates Ltd National Championships, which will be played on Friday 20 March.

it promises to be a spectacular competition as players battle to join the top seeds in the main draw – all while providing rich entertainment to hundreds of spectators.

Everyone entered in the qualifying stage will compete for the remaining 24 places, with the main draw starting from the last 32.

All entrants must have more than 200 Senior ranking points, or be dummied with more than 200 points, as of the entry deadline of 11.59pm on Wednesday 18 February.

Entries are on a first come, first served basis, with the exception of the top 50 Senior Men and top 32 Senior Women, who have protected spaces – but must still enter before the deadline.

Any eligible player can also enter the doubles categories, with up to 16 pairs in each category, and priority going to pairings with the highest combined ranking points.

Seedings for the qualifying tournament will be based on the February rankings list.