Iconic Rio is about to host an Elite Beach Pro Tour event for the third straight year, but the remarkable Brazilian city has a long story with beach volleyball, having hosted numerous major international events over the years, ever since the 1980s, including the 2016 Olympic Games, the 2003 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships and many high-caliber stops on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour.
It was at Rio 2016, where Barbara Seixas claimed her Olympic silver medal alongside Agatha Bednarczuk, just a year after they had triumphed as 2015 world champions in the Netherlands. And it was in Rio, where she picked up the last of many Beach Pro Tour golds she and Carol Salgado collected together, while also reigning as the number one team in the FIVB World Ranking for weeks on end.
While Carol is now once again a member of the world’s number one duo, along with Rebecca Cavalcanti, and the two will enter this week’s Rio de Janeiro Elite as the top seeds in the main bracket, Barbara Seixas & Barbara Caroline will have to start the tournament from Wednesday’s qualifiers. Thus, 38-year-old Seixas is set to return to the Beach Pro Tour after an absence period of over 20 months, while 23-year-old Barbara Caroline is about to make her Tour debut.
Carol, who defended the Rio title she earned with Barbara in 2024 by topping the podium in 2025 with Rebecca, will now try to make it three in a row. As bracket leaders, she and Rebecca will start their main draw campaign on Wednesday afternoon with a Pool A game against a team emerging from the qualifiers in the morning. In the other first-leg match of this pool, Spain’s Sofia Izuzquiza & Tania Moreno will meet USA’s Piper Ferch & Teegan Van Gunst.
Another American pair – second-seeded Julia Donlin & Lexy Denaburg – leads the Pool B lineup. The pool also features their compatriots Madelyne Anderson & Alaina Chacon and Brazil’s Kyce Martins & Talita Simonetti.
One of only three teams pre-seeded directly into the main draw that are not from Brazil and the USA, Katja Stam & Raisa Schoon of the Netherlands, are seeded third and will play in Pool C. After meeting qualifiers in the first leg, they will also have pool encounters with Japan’s Asami Shiba & Reika Murakami and USA’s Molly Shaw & Molly Phillips.
In Pool D, Brazil’s Talita Antunes & Taiana Lima, seeded fourth, will be in the company of two US pairs – Corinne Quiggle & Chloe Loreen and Alexis Durish & Audrey Koenig.
Former world’s number one team Thamela Coradello & Victoria Lopes of Brazil, seeded fifth in the Rio main draw, headline Pool E, where the American pairing of former world champion Sara Hughes with Allysa Batenhorst will be one of their opponents. The other two will emerge from the qualifiers.
Pool F is the other pool with two participants yet to be determined. The two known are sixth-seeded Megan Kraft & Kelly Cheng, who is also a former world champion (with Hughes), of the United States and seventh-seeded Verena Figueira & Thainara Feitosa of Brazil.
Serving off at 09:00 local time (12:00 UTC) on July 29, a single round of eight women’s qualifying matches will fill the eight vacancies in the main draw, which is set to get underway in the afternoon with the first leg of pool play.
A single round robin will determine the final standings in each pool, with the pool winners, the pool runners-up and the two best-ranked third-placed teams advancing straight to the eighthfinals. The remaining four third-placed duos will set up two sixteenthfinal fixtures to determine the other two eighthfinalists. Quarterfinals, semifinals and medal matches will follow on the way to Sunday’s podium in Rio de Janeiro.
