To reach the best four in the world is a big achievement and two teams will celebrate such an achievement on Wednesday. Mercury is rising at Thailand 2025 as the first 2025 FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship quarterfinals are set to get underway in Bangkok and the first semifinalists are about to emerge. The competition day in the Thai capital will serve off with a game between the Netherlands and Japan, and end with a mighty clash between Italy and Poland.
Women's World Championship 2025
Day 11: World Champs heat up with first quarterfinals
Netherlands against Japan and Italy against Poland on Wednesday’s program
Published 05:20, 03 Sept 2025
Paola Egonu against Malwina Smarzek in a VNL 2025 semifinal
- Watch the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Women's World Championship on VBTV
Quarterfinal 1: Netherlands v Japan
The first quarterfinal fixture will set the Netherlands against Japan at 17:00 local time (10:00 UTC) on Wednesday. The winner of that match will face the winner of Thursday’s quarterfinal between USA and Turkiye in one of the semifinals.
The two teams already met earlier this season. In a Volleyball Nations League game played in Ottawa in early June, Japan hammered out a 3-0 (25-17, 25-15, 25-16) shutout of their European opponents. Before that, however, the Dutch won three consecutive VNL meetings with Japan in 2021, 2022 and 2023. They also met at the previous World Championship in 2022. In the second pool phase of the tournament, the Asian side celebrated a 3-0 victory.
The Netherlands’ best result in the history of the women’s World Championships was the fourth place they took in 2018. The team is currently positioned in number eight in the FIVB World Ranking. The Dutch advanced to the 2025 quarterfinals after a dramatic five-set win over defending champions Serbia in the eighthfinals, where they arrived as the undefeated winners of Pool A. Steered by the best setter of the tournament so far, Sarah van Aalen, they started off with a hard-fought five-set victory over Sweden, swept their game with Egypt in straight sets and, in the deciding match for the first place, squeezed out a nail-biting tie-breaker win over hosts Thailand. Outside hitter Nika Daalderop has been the Netherlands’ best scorer so far, with 67 points across the four matches played.
Japan are one of the most decorated teams in the history of the women’s World Championships, with three titles, three silver medals and a bronze, which was their most recent medal from 2010. In VNL 2025, they finished fourth and are now the number four team in the World Ranking. The Japanese team is still unbeaten at Thailand 2025. They swept their Pool H opener against Cameroon, but had to battle back from two sets down to overcome Ukraine. In the first-place decider, Japan defeated 2018 and 2022 world champs Serbia in four sets. In their eighthfinal encounter with hosts Thailand, they produced a straight-set victory to progress to the quarterfinals. Outside hitter and captain Mayu Ishikawa is Japan’s leading scorer of this World Championship so far, with 73 points to her name.
Quarterfinal 2: Italy v Poland
The second World Championship 2025 semifinalist will emerge from a high-profile all-European duel between Italy and Poland, serving off at 20:30 local time (13:30 UTC), and will find out its opponent for a spot in the final at the end of Thursday’s game between Brazil and France.
The two teams also met in one of this year’s VNL semifinals in Lodz, where the southern Europeans mastered an emphatic 3-0 (25-18, 25-16, 25-14) victory over their central European hosts. In fact, Italy took out Poland in straight sets in both of their two most recent encounters, in the VNL 2025 semis and in the VNL 2024 semis. That put an end to Poland’s three-game winning streak in the head-to-head series.
Italy are the reigning Olympic and VNL champions, as well as the number one team in the FIVB World Ranking. They triumphed as world champions back in 2002. The other two World Championship podiums they have achieved in history came at the two most recent editions of the competition – silver in 2018 and bronze in 2022. Italy have not lost an official game in over 15 months now (since June 1, 2024) and the winning streak they are on already accounts for 33 consecutive matches. Last week, they swept their eighthfinal match with Germany in straight sets. Before that, Italy went through the first stage of this World Championship with straight-set wins over Slovakia and Cuba, and a four-set victory over Belgium to top the Pool B standings with a full nine points. Their star opposite Paola Egonu is the team’s most prolific scorer of the tournament with a total of 76 points in the four matches played.
Poland’s World Championship collection features one silver and two bronze medals, but the last time they made it to the podium was back 63 years ago, in 1962. Now their team is the world’s number three in the ranking. They battled their way to the quarterfinals in a dramatic five-set eighthfinal saga against Belgium. Poland also won all three of their matches in Pool G, but somewhat unexpectedly they lost sets in each one of them – 3-1 against Vietnam, 3-1 against Kenya and a nail-biting 3-2 against Germany. Their opposite Magdalena Stysiak is their best scorer, also piling up a 76-point tally across the four matches played. Their middle blocker and captain Agnieszka Korneluk is on top of the best blockers ranking of the competition with 15 stuffs so far, while rising outside hitter star Martyna Czyrnianska leads in the best servers chart with 10 aces.
FIVB Women’s World Championship schedule for Wednesday, September 3, 2025
17:00 local (10:00 UTC): Netherlands v Japan
20:30 local (13:30 UTC): Italy v Poland
