2026 Men's Volleyball Club World Championship: Eight Clubs, Four Continents, One Poland

In the list of eight teams for the 2026 FIVB Men's Club World Championship, there is an undrawn blank space. It sits where the host nation's team should be. Poland hosts, Poland handles the arena, the tickets, the broadcast signal, and yet at the moment the announcement went out, no club of theirs stood on that list. The eight names called out come from four continents: Europe, South America, Asia and Africa.

I read that news on a morning in Nagoya, and the first thing I did, out of the habit of someone who has sat in a broadcast booth for forty-two years, was to count how many of those names I had watched with my own eyes rather than through a screen.

Then memory pulled me back to April 2026, in Jordan. The semifinal of the AFC Women's Asian Cup, Japan against China, 3-1. In the 67th minute, Iwabuchi Mana turned and shot, and I cried live on air. The colleague beside me reminded me to stay calm. I remember thinking: if staying calm means not being shaken by a beautiful piece of play, then I respectfully decline. The ball does not cry, but the storyteller does.

I bring that up for one very specific reason. I care about who gets seen. A list of eight teams, at first glance, is administrative procedure. But a list is where money and power leave their clearest traces, and the blank spaces in it sometimes say as much as the names.

The picture as announced

The 2026 FIVB Men's Club World Championship takes place in Poland with eight clubs. The organisers said detailed ticketing and schedule information will be announced in due course. Poland has also been confirmed as host for the 2027 edition, a signal that this is a multi-year arrangement rather than a one-off staging.

The eight teams are Perugia of Italy, the reigning champions and freshly crowned CEV Champions League winners; Sada Cruzeiro of Brazil, five-time club world champions; Vôlei Renata, also of Brazil; Al Ahly of Egypt; Foolad Sirjan Iranian of Iran; Ziraat of Turkey, appearing for the first time; and Jakarta Bhayangkara Presisi of Indonesia, also debuting, and the first Indonesian men's club to win an Asian continental title.

A few years ago, an Indonesian team sharing a list with Perugia and Sada Cruzeiro would have been read as a printing error. Not any more.

Perugia and the problem of a system already finished

Perugia are strong not because they have many stars, but because every one of their stars is born in a single spot on the court: the hands of Simone Giannelli. That is what I want to make clear before saying anything else about this team.

Based on my experience following matches at previous Club World Championships, I have noticed a repeating pattern: the champions in a short format are always the teams with the fewest moving parts. Perugia fit that description exactly. Giannelli reads the opposing block before the ball from the first pass reaches his hands. When he has a perfect ball, Perugia attack quickly through the middle and push the ball behind the block. When the first pass breaks down, the team still has a second option: a high ball to Oleh Plotnytskyi on the left wing, or to the opposite on the right.

Plotnytskyi is the kind of outside hitter any coach wants in a deciding set. He passes steadily, and when the match enters a run of hard balls, he is still the man willing to hit into the block rather than out of bounds. The difference between a champion and a runner-up at this level is usually two or three rallies like that across an entire tournament.

But there is one tactical detail I believe will decide Perugia's fate in Poland, and it lives at the service line. Their serve puts pressure on opponents to break the opposing quick attack, forcing them into high balls. When opponents hit high balls, Perugia's block has time to read and set. It is a closed chain of cause and effect, and it only works when the serving quality holds steady across several matches.

Their real risk lies elsewhere. That system depends on one person. Giannelli carries both club and national team, and at nearly thirty, that workload will leave a mark at some point. If he is absent or drops form for a few matches, Perugia still have a strong squad, but they lose the hardest thing to replace: the man who decides the tempo.

One notable detail: the detailed schedule has not been released. That means we do not yet know which part of the domestic season the tournament falls into, and that is the biggest variable for every European club.

Sada Cruzeiro and institutional memory

Five club world titles is a number no club outside Brazil has reached. According to official FIVB records, Sada Cruzeiro are the most decorated team in the history of this competition, and that creates something money cannot buy in the transfer market: institutional memory.

Institutional memory is when a team knows exactly what to do in the fifth set, at 13-13, in a foreign arena. Brazilian teams in particular, and the Brazilian volleyball school in general, live on a high volume of reception and durable physical foundations. They are not afraid of long matches. In a short format, that endurance is a double advantage: it helps them win, and it helps them avoid collapsing on their own.

Their problem lies in age and scheduling. If the tournament falls during the run-in of the Brazilian Superliga, they will have to split their strength across two fronts, and the older pillars will be the first to pay. I have watched too many strong teams enter a Club World Championship on tired legs, and that story usually ends in the semifinal.

Vôlei Renata, the second Brazilian team, are a different story. Their presence shows the depth of Brazilian club volleyball, where two teams from the same country can both sit among the eight strongest on the planet. But the depth of a domestic league does not automatically convert into strength on the world stage.

Four continents and the real gap

Foolad Sirjan Iranian bring the Asian school: speed, defensive discipline, a low error rate. Teams like that always make European sides uncomfortable in the first set, while the rhythm is still settling. But when the match stretches and the ball goes high above the net, the physical limit shows. That is the boundary that technique cannot fully cross.

Al Ahly of Egypt represent Africa. They are used to long journeys within their own continent, so travelling to Poland is not a great physical shock. But the level of opposition here is entirely different.

Ziraat of Turkey are the most interesting case among the debutants. The Turkish domestic league has money, crowds and pulling power for international stars, but this is their first step into the world club stage. Money buys players; it does not buy collective experience in a tournament where every point weighs more than usual.

And then there is Jakarta Bhayangkara Presisi. Their match in Poland will be the first time an Indonesian men's club tests itself at this level. Their value in this year's tournament lies not in the result, but in the fact that they force people to write Indonesia onto a map where the country previously had no place.

To be blunt: the gap between Perugia and Jakarta is very large, and on the scoreboard it will show up as short sets. I have no intention of blurring that.

The blind spot of an announcement

This announcement was written to sell a story of globalisation. Eight teams, four continents, it sounds beautiful. But there are a few places I cannot help noticing.

The first is the audience problem. A fan in Jakarta who wants to watch their team play Perugia will have to wake up at what hour, and on which channel. An expanded team list reaching into Asia only has real value when the pictures reach viewers in Asia. Otherwise it is progress on paper.

The second is the host question. Poland hosts two years in a row, investing in facilities and brand, yet has no team of its own on the list. In previous editions, host nations were often given a wild card. The chance of that repeating here exists, and it would completely change the atmosphere in the arena.

Third, and this is what I have been thinking about most in recent days. As the men's club competition expands across four continents, I wonder whether the women's side has an equivalent list. After more than forty years of watching, I am used to having to search for information about women's teams, to dig up schedules myself, to cross-check results from sources that are not fully broadcast. Women's volleyball does not need a rescuer; it needs someone willing to look long enough.

At fifty-eight, I no longer remember the scores; I remember the faces of the scorers. That holds true for the men's matches I have commentated too. I remember the faces of liberos getting up after a botched dig, the averted glance of an outside hitter after the ball hit the floor. None of that appears in any statistics table, and none of it appears in an announcement of team lists.

I thought I was telling their story, and it turned out they were telling mine.

What is changing

There is one detail in this tournament that I consider more important than the trophy: a team from Indonesia will stand at the service line in Poland, and back home, someone is watching a Club World Championship for the first time because their team is in it.

Eight teams in Poland create a test case that even the FIVB may not have fully anticipated: whether an emerging volleyball nation can improve faster by being placed beside the best, or whether it will be crushed in two short sets.

I choose to believe in the first possibility, but I will not predict the result. I will sit down, turn on the screen, and wait for the moment an Indonesian libero gets up after a ball the whole arena thought was dead. In Jakarta, there may be a twelve-year-old girl seeing that and deciding she will follow this path. Everything else is just time.