Major honours
Hungary was table tennis's first dynasty. A founding ITTF member from 1926, it swept the men's singles, women's singles and men's team at the inaugural World Championships in London that December. In the hardbat era of thin pimpled rubber, Victor Barna collected more than 20 World Championship titles across all events, including five singles crowns between 1930 and 1935, while Maria Mednyanszky won five straight women's singles titles. After the war, Ferenc Sido won three in a row from 1947. Hungary's combined 20 men's and women's World Championship singles titles rank second only to China, and its 12 Swaythling Cups remain the most of any European country. Its last peaks came in 1975 in Calcutta, when Istvan Jonyer won the men's singles, and in 1979 in Pyongyang, when Hungary broke China's run of consecutive team titles. By the time table tennis became an Olympic sport in 1988, Hungary had already fallen from the world summit, so every one of its records belongs to the World Championships alone.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
Between the wars, Czechoslovakia and Austria most often shook Hungary's grip, and the World Championships shuttling between Prague and Budapest amounted to a standing fixture between them.