Seven teams have already secured their seat at Paris 2024

2024.01.12

After the addition of non-competing athletes, team rosters will increase to 13 with seven teams each gender already guaranteed seats in Paris 2024.

One of the main events of the upcoming year is expected to be the volleyball competitions for men and women at the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024. The world’s greatest volleyball players will compete for gold at the 16th Olympic volleyball tournament, which will take place at the South Paris Arena within Paris Expo from July 27 to August 11.

Volleyball will take the Olympic stage for the sixteenth time and make its first-ever appearance at a Games hosted in the French capital after making its debut in the Tokyo 1964 Games. Twelve women’s and twelve men’s teams will compete fiercely for the only goal of winning an Olympic medal in the South Paris Arena, which is tucked away in the center of the city.

Additionally, the FIVB has stated that each team competing in the Games will have the option to add one non-competing (AP) athlete in place of an athlete who is unable to play due to illness for the first time in the history of the Olympic volleyball tournament. Team rosters will therefore include 13 athletes instead of just 12.

In order to provide teams more flexibility and squad depth, the FIVB and IOC had lengthy consultations before deciding to raise roster numbers to levels more in line with those of the FIVB’s key tournaments. Athletes designated as alternates (APs) are recognized by the IOC as non-competing athletes who step in at the last minute to replace injured or unwell participants. For the balance of the competition, the substitute athlete will not be permitted to competition.

The 13th athlete will not be housed at the Olympic Village unless special permission is given by the relevant National Olympic Committee, but they will be allowed to watch games and train with the team. A soon-to-be-released amended edition of the Competition Regulations of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 volleyball competition will provide further details on the AP athlete procedure.

Additionally, the Paris 2024 Drawing of Lots (DoL) procedure has been verified. The women’s teams and men’s teams will be rated based on their place in the World Ranking on June 17, 2024, and June 24, 2024, respectively, for the twelve qualified teams.

As the host team, France is seeded 1st and will be placed in the top position of Pool A. The two top ranked teams seeded 2nd and 3rd will be placed at the top of Pools B and C respectively. The remaining nine teams will be distributed across three bowls of three teams each based on their position in the World Ranking and drawn for their seed line by line applying the serpentine system.

Those hosting France, which qualified for both competitions automatically, will try to win by riding the tide of support from home. The men’s national volleyball team, captained by Earvin Ngapeth (shown in the top photo), the Tokyo 2020 Most Valuable Player, will also get the chance to defend its inaugural Olympic volleyball championship from the most recent Games.

The FIVB Road to Paris Volleyball Qualifiers in 2023 have already guaranteed seats at the Games for an additional six teams each gender. The women’s teams who qualified to compete in Paris 2023 were the Dominican Republic, Turkey, the United States, Serbia, Brazil, and Poland.

The men’s national teams of Germany, the USA, Poland, Brazil, Japan and Canada have also booked their tickets to the Games.

After the Volleyball Nations League (VNL) 2024 Preliminary Phase concludes, the final Olympic roster will be officially completed with five more teams per gender, based on the FIVB Volleyball World Ranking. Priority will be given to countries from continents without teams qualified for the Games in order to ensure the principle of universality.

With the Women’s VNL Preliminary Phase starting on May 14 and the Men’s on May 21, there is still much to play for for the teams that just lost out on an Olympic ticket in the competition last year.

@charith