One of beach volleyball’s most iconic locations – Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro – is set to host the ninth Elite event on the 2025 Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour this week, from Wednesday, September 24, to Sunday, September 28. It will also be the fourth of a total of five Elite stops in Brazil this year, and the second one Rio is hosting since the inception of the Beach Pro Tour. The first day of action in the men’s competition will offer a single round of eight qualification matches, followed by the first round of pool play in the 24-team main draw.

· Watch the Rio de Janeiro Elite on VBTV

In November last year, Rio de Janeiro welcomed the Beach Pro Tour for the first time and all four teams that reached the Elite16 semifinals back then will be back for more this week.

The 2025 Rio de Janeiro Elite men’s main draw bracket is topped by Tokyo 2020 Olympic champions Anders Mol & Christian Sorum of Norway. The Beachvolley Vikings are also Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medalists, reigning European champions and the number one team in the FIVB World Ranking. They are the most decorated team on the Beach World Tour so far. This season alone, they have medaled at all but two of their seven Elite appearances on the Tour, topping the podiums at three of them. Last year in Rio, they finished fourth. On Wednesday afternoon, Mol & Sorum will open Pool A for business against a team arising from the qualifications in the morning. In the other Pool A opener, American Olympians Miles Evans & Chase Budinger will take on Germany’s Paul Henning & Lui Wust.

Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot will be seeded second in Rio de Janeiro after picking up one gold and four bronze medals out of six Beach Pro Tour appearances this year. The Dutch pair picked up bronze last week at the Joao Pessoa Elite in Brazil and climbed back up to number three in the World Ranking. If they overcome the qualifiers that emerge as their first opponent in Pool B in Rio, they will meet the winners of the match between US Olympians Miles Partain & Andrew Benesh and Switzerland’s Marco Krattiger & Leo Dillier for the first place in the pool.

Last year’s Rio runners-up Nicolas Capogrosso & Tomas Capogrosso of Argentina, currently the number four team in the World Ranking, will start their campaign from Pool C, with a game against Teo Rotar & Arnaud Gauthier-Rat. The world’s number nine team, Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan of Qatar, will return to action, aiming at their third Beach Pro Tour gold of the season. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medalists are seeded third in Rio and will start their participation in Pool C against a team from the qualifiers.

The bronze medalists of the 2024 Rio Elite16, the current world’s number 10 Martins Plavins & Kristians Fokerots of Latvia, will headline Pool D. The other two teams in the pool, who will start with a match against each other, are Australian Olympians Mark Nicolaidis & Izac Carracher and the Brazilian pairing of 2017 world champion Andre Stein and 2022 World Championship silver medalist Renato Lima.

Pool E is one of the two awaiting two qualifying teams to join the line-up. It will be led by the Dutch pairing of 2013 world champion Alexander Brouwer with Steven van de Velde, who finished fourth last week in Joao Pessoa. Americans Chaim Schalk & James Shaw are the other known duo in the pool.

Last week’s Joao Pessoa winners have already piled up a solid success record in the home Brazilian sand. The Brazilian tandem of 2017 world champion Evandro Oliveira and Arthur Mariano Lanci, currently number six in the World Ranking, have collected four Beach Pro Tour gold medals so far, earning all of them in their home country, and will try to get more as they lead Pool E in Rio as the sixth seed in the main draw. The pool will also be graced by Cuban Olympians Noslen Diaz & Jorge Alayo.

Last year’s Rio de Janeiro Elite16 winners Joaquin Bello & Javier Bello of England are also back for more, but they will start their campaign from Wednesday’s qualifications. So they did in 2024, when they entered as the 14^th-seeded team in the qualification bracket, but went on to claim their first and only Beach Pro Tour gold so far.

The men’s qualifiers, set to get underway at 08:00 local time (11:00 UTC) on Wednesday, will feature more high-caliber teams like last week’s Joao Pessoa silver medalists Remi Bassereau & Calvin Aye of France, now a joint number 11 in the World Ranking, or Norway’s Mathias Berntsen & Hendrik Mol, also ranked 11^th in the world. The world’s numbers 20 and 22 – Austria’s Timo Hammarberg & Tim Berger and Portugal’s Joao Pedrosa & Hugo Campos, respectively – who made brilliant runs from the qualifiers all the way to the quarterfinals in Joao Pessoa a few days ago, are also back among the candidates for main draw spots this week in Rio.

Once the main draw serves off on Wednesday afternoon, modified pool play format will determine the three teams per pool that will advance to the elimination rounds, which will eventually lead to Sunday’s medal matches in Rio de Janeiro.

VW Beach Pro Tour Rio de Janeiro Elite: men’s entry list
VW Beach Pro Tour Rio de Janeiro Elite: match schedule

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