Chinese Taipei, silver at the last Games, participated at the event with only one Athens medalist, Wang Cheng Pang.

Ukraine, bronze in Athens, brought Viktor Ruban and Oleksandr Serdyuk back at the Games.

12 teams qualified for the event at the Beijing Olympics: host China, plus the top 8 teams at the 44th Outdoor Archery World championship, held in Leipzig, Germany, and 3 other NOCs that qualified three athletes for the Games.

The competition begins with the same ranking round used to determine the individual event seeding.

In each round of elimination, the two teams each fire 24 arrows (with each individual archer accounting for 8 of them).