Lineup for knockouts set at Asian Beach Champs

The direct elimination brackets at the 2026 AVC Beach Volleyball Asian Championships are all set at the end of Thursday’s competition day in Shangluo, China. The pool stage of the tournaments is now over without any major surprises or seeding upsets. In each gender, the six pool winners, the six pool runners-up and the two best-ranked third-placed teams advanced straight to Friday’s eighthfinals, while the remaining four third-placed duos moved on to two sixteenthfinal fixtures to be played earlier on Friday and fill the remaining two eighthfinal vacancies.

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The five highest-seeded teams in the men’s main draw – Wu Jiaxin & Zhou Chaowei of China, Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan of Qatar, Mark Nicolaidis & Izac Carracher of Australia, their compatriots Thomas Hodges & Ben Hood and Indonesia’s Bintang Akbar & Sofyan Rachman Efendi – topped their pools undefeated. Only in Pool F, the direct duel for the first place produced an upset, with seventh-seeded Pithak Tipjan & Wachirawit Muadpha of Thailand celebrating a hard-fought 2-1 (20-22, 23-21, 15-9) comeback victory over sixth-seeded Wang Yanwei & Du Hongjun of China.

Wang & Du finished second in their pool on a 2-1 win-loss record and also qualified for the eighthfinals. In four of the other five pools, the runners-up also finished on 2-1, and they were Iran’s Abbas Pourasgari & Alireza Aghajanighasab, New Zealand’s Sam O'Dea & Ben O'Dea, and Japan’s Kai Kurokawa & Ryuichi Adachi and Takumi Takahashi & Jumpei Ikeda. In Pool D, however, three of the duos ended up on a 1-2 win-loss record each and the order was based on point ratios. Thus, Iran’s Abolhassan Khakizadeh & AmirAli GhalehNovi finished in second place and jumped into the eighthfinals, Kazakhstan’s Sergey Bogatu & Kirill Gurin took third and progressed to the sixteenthfinals, while Oman’s Mazin Alhashmi & Hood Al Jalaboubi had to leave the competition after finishing fourth.

Thailand’s Netitorn Muneekul & Poravid Taovato and Kazakhstan’s Dmitriy Yakovlev & Abdulmajid Mokhammad were the two best-ranked third-placed teams that will skip the first knockout round and move straight to the eighthfinals. Jad Abi Karam & Hadi El Chabib of Lebanon, seeded 22^nd in the 24-team main draw, were the lowest ranked team to survive the pool stage and advance to the knockouts. They will continue in the sixteenthfinal round, along with Bogatu & Gurin, Qatar’s Musa Alkeer Mou & Mohamed Ihab Zaki and New Zealand’s Juraj Krajci & Noah Smith.

Main draw seeding proved pretty solid in the women’s tournament. Only two of the 36 matches of the pool stage resulted in upsets.

After 17^th-seeded Patcharaporn Seehawong & Salinda Mungkhon of Thailand beat eighth-seeded Cherry Ann Rondina & Bernadeth Pons of the Philippines in three sets on Wednesday, with the two teams eventually finishing second and third in Pool E, both advancing to the eighthfinals, a survival match for the third place in Pool F on Thursday propelled 19^th-seeded Laura Kabulbekova & Merey Kozhakhmet of Kazakhstan to the sixteenthfinals as they knocked 18^th-seeded Goh Yu Heng (Cadence) & Goh Rachael Yu Jie of Malaysia out of contention with a 2-0 (21-12, 21-10) shutout.

So, the six highest seeds – Yan Xu & Xia Xinyi of China, Stefanie Fejes & Taliqua Clancy of Australia, Asami Shiba & Reika Murakami of Japan, Shaunna Polley & Olivia MacDonald of New Zealand, Jasmine Fleming & Elizabeth Alchin of Australia and Ren Matsumoto & Non Matsumoto of Japan – all swept their pools unbeaten.

Cao Shuting & Dong Jie of China, Taravadee Naraphornrapat & Worapeerachayakorn Kongphopsarutawadee of Thailand, Khylem Harl Progella & Sofiah Shanine Pagara of the Philippines, Meile Rose Green & Grace Tiplady of New Zealand and Tsang Ngok Ling & Man Ching of Hong Kong joined Patcharaporn & Salinda into the eighthfinals as pool runners-up, while Singapore’s Lee Xin En Valerie & Ang Hui Ying joined Rondina & Pons into the second elimination round as the two best-ranked third-placed teams.

The two sixteenthfinal match-ups will feature an all-Kazakhstani clash between Kabulbekova & Kozhakhmet and Kristina Karimova & Yekaterina Ryukhova, and a duel between Hong Kong’s To Wing Tung & To Wing Man and Vanuatu’s Sherysyn Toko & Miller Pata.

AVC Beach Volleyball Asian Championship action resumes on Friday at 10:00 local time (02:00 UTC) with the men’s sixteenthfinals, to be followed by the women’s sixteenthfinals an hour later and all the eighthfinal matches in the afternoon and evening sessions.

2026 AVC Beach Volleyball Asian Championships: schedule and results

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