The Olympic qualification process in beach volleyball is officially underway! The first tournament that will issue tickets to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games started on Wednesday in Poland. On Sunday, the women’s and the men’s gold medalists of the 2026 CEV European Beach Volleyball Championships (EuroBeachVolley) in Stare Jablonki will have secured the first Olympic quotas for their countries.
EuroBeachVolley is an annual event that determines Europe’s continental beach volleyball champions in both genders. This year, it also serves as an Olympic qualifier, just like the continental championships of the other four confederations, all of which are set to take place between now and November.
The best European teams have gathered in Stare Jablonki to contest the EuroBeachVolley medals and the Olympic vacancies available.
32 pairs per gender are chasing their Olympic dream, having launched their EuroBeachVolley campaigns in Poland on Wednesday. They are split into eight pools of four, with a modified pool play format, featuring two pool semifinals, a losers’ match and a winners’ match to determine the final pool standings. The teams that finish third in the pools will take on the runners-up of other pools in the sixteenthfinal single-elimination round, the winners of which will move to the eighthfinal round, where they will challenge the eight pool winners. Quarterfinals, semifinals and medal matches will follow to determine the final tournament standings.
The lineups are really impressive and include some of beach volleyball’s brightest stars in the world.
The men’s field features reigning Olympic and world champions David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden and their younger compatriots Jacob Holting Nilsson & Elmer Andersson – silver medalists of the Adelaide 2025 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship and current leaders of the men’s FIVB Beach Volleyball World Ranking.
Defending European champions Anders Mol & Christian Sorum of Norway – Olympic champions at Tokyo 2020 and Olympic bronze medalists at Paris 2024 – are also among the main candidates for the men’s ticket to LA, seeking to collect their sixth European crown.
The men’s lineup includes another three Olympic medalists – Paris 2024 runner-up Nils Ehlers of Germany, hitting the sand in Stare Jablonki with current teammate Lui Wust, Rio de Janeiro 2016 bronze medalist Alexander Brouwer of the Netherlands chasing new glory in partnership with mighty Stefan Boermans, and London 2012 bronze medalist Martins Plavins of Latvia, whose tandem with rising star Kristians Fokerots won the 2024 European title and is now the number two team in the world.
Brouwer is also one of the former world champions competing in Stare Jablonki. So are Czechia’s Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner, now playing separately with younger teammates – Matyas Dzavoronok and Tadeas Trousil, respectively. 2017 World Championship silver medalist and two-time European Championship medalist Alexander Horst of Austria is looking for more EuroBeachVolley success along with Christoph Dressler. The bronze medalists of the last two editions of the World Championship – France’s Teo Rotar & Arnaud Gauthier-Rat and Polish home favorites Michal Bryl & Bartosz Losiak – are hoping to excel at EuroBeachVolley as well.
