Olympic table tennis consists of four events: men's singles, women's singles, men's team and women's team. Singles matches are a best-of-seven games setup, with the first player to 11 points (by a margin of two points) winning each game. Team matches consist of four singles matches and one doubles match, each played over the best-of-five games.

Tournament
In Tokyo, all men's and women's singles events will be contested as single-elimination tournaments. The format for teams is similar to singles, except 32 teams (16 men's and 16 women's) are involved as opposed to 64 individual players in the singles tournaments. Team contests are best-of-five matches.

Draws - Singles
Each table tennis singles draw was meant to feature 64 entries, with no more than two per nation. The single-elimination tournament will feature best-of-seven games setups. 

Draws - Team
No player will play more than two matches in each contest.

The contest, a best of five matches, will start with two singles matches.

The third match will be doubles and must include the player who has not been selected in either of the preceding singles matches.

Following the doubles, there will be two further singles matches, if necessary.

Team captains may select the order in which the players (labeled A-B-C and X-Y-Z in the contest format) appear and they must initially nominate which two players will compete in the first two singles matches.

Following those matches, the team captain can then decide who plays doubles with the player who has not participated in the first two singles. From there, there is a formula to determine the final two matches, if necessary. A coin toss is used at the beginning of the match to give the captains a choice in picking which set of three players they wish to be. The system avoids any repetition of matches; no players can face each other on two occasions in singles matches in one particular contest.

Progression
Players advance through the draw by winning matches. Losers are eliminated until the field is down to four players/teams. At this stage, the semifinal winners advance to meet in the Gold Medal Final; the semifinal losers face each other to determine who wins bronze.

Match and contest format
All matches will be the best of seven games. Play is continuous throughout a match, except for a one-minute break between each game. All team contests will be best-of-five matches.

Each game is played to 11 points, with a 'win by two' format. So, for example, if there is a 10-10 tie, the game is won by the first player/team to score two points more than the opposition. In the last possible game of a match, the players/teams change ends when either player/team has scored five points.