2025 Volleyball World Championships participants revealed

The 32 men’s and 32 women’s national teams that will compete for medals at the 2025 FIVB Volleyball World Championships have now been announced, as the qualification period for the tournaments was concluded.

Set to feature 32 national teams in each gender for the first time (previously 24 teams per gender competed), next year’s edition of the event will also be the first to be held biannually. In 2025, as many as 43 different countries will be represented at the World Championships – six from Africa, eight from Asia, 19 from Europe, six from the NORCECA region and four from South America.

The men’s tournament has two automatic qualifiers – hosts the Philippines and defending champions Italy. As part of the new qualification system, 15 spots were awarded during the 2023 Continental Championships, with Egypt, Algeria and Libya emerging from Africa, Japan, Iran and Qatar qualifying in Asia, Poland, Slovenia and France taking the European berths, the USA, Canada and Cuba joining from the NORCECA region and Argentina, Brazil and Colombia representing South America.

The remaining 15 spots were allocated to the best national teams in the FIVB World Rankings as of August 30, 2024, not yet qualified – Germany, Serbia, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium, Türkiye, Czechia, Bulgaria, Portugal, Finland, Tunisia, China, Romania, Chile and Korea.

The men’s World Championship will be held in the Philippines from September 12-28, 2025, and the Drawing of Lots will take place in Manila, on September 14, 2024, at 20:30 local time (12:30 UTC), and will be streamed live and for free on VBTV and Volleyball World’s YouTube channel.

The system to determine the 32 women’s national teams that will compete in Thailand next year was exactly the same, with the host country and defending champions Serbia securing their spots automatically.

Emerging from the Continental Championships were Kenya, Egypt and Cameroon (Africa), China, Japan and Vietnam (Asia), Türkiye, the Netherlands and Italy (Europe), the Dominican Republic, USA and Canada (NORCECA) and Brazil, Argentina and Colombia (South America).

The 15 berths allocated via the FIVB World Rankings went to Poland, Germany, Belgium, Czechia, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, France, Bulgaria, Cuba, Sweden, Mexico, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Greece.

The exact dates of the 2025 Volleyball Women’s World Championship and information about the tournament’s Drawing of Lots will be released when available.