September 30, 2014. Yekaterinburg is going to host the European table tennis championship in 2015: the city’s application was recently approved by the European Table Tennis Union’s congress.

‘This decision is the result of our ongoing efforts aimed at the development of table tennis in Sverdlovsk Region, this is the result of local tennis players’ achievement, and the result of Sverdlovsk Region’s international acclaim,’ says Sverdlovsk Region Minister for Physical Education, Sports, & Youth Policy Leonid Rapoport.

The European table tennis championship is to take place on September 24-October 5, 2015. Yekaterinburg EXPO, the city’s international exhibition center, is going to be the main venue for the event. Over five hundred contestants from fifty different countries will join in the competition. The championship will engage more than 130 international judges. Two pavilions are expected to be operating simultaneously, the primary one with 25 tables and the practice one with 12 tables. The event coordinators have also put forth strict requirements regarding the location of the supporters, the TV broadcasting, and security issues.

The agreement to have Yekaterinburg apply for hosting the European championship next year was reached during Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeniy Kuivashev’s meeting with Assistant to the Russian Federation President Igor Levitin on June 25.